Weekly: Another Crypto Market “Renaissance”, $3B in Liquidations, Binance Data for Russia, and Breakthrough in Unitree Humanoid Robots

Published: August 23, 2026 – 13:07 UTC

Incrypted’s editorial team has prepared another weekly digest of the key events in the Web3 space. This time, the crypto market has finally woken up: bitcoin climbed to nearly $79,500, and the sharp rally was accompanied by liquidations totaling almost $3 billion. We will also cover Binance handing a client’s data to Russian authorities, a leak involving nearly 40,000 SafePal users, the explosive IPO of humanoid robot maker Unitree, new rules for the crypto market in the US, AI developments, and other major industry events.

Main News

Bitcoin

Market: the asset is regaining ground

The crypto market shifted into a rapid recovery: on August 19, bitcoin rose to $72,000 in a single day for the first time since early June. By August 21, the leading cryptocurrency reached a local high of around $79,500; the asset’s weekly gain came in at 18.8%.

The sharp market move was accompanied by large-scale liquidations: over the course of a day, they totaled nearly $3 billion, with $2.74 billion coming from short positions, and more than 170,000 traders recorded losses overall. At the time of writing, the leading cryptocurrency is trading at $76,829, according to TradingView.

*BTC/USDT chart on the Binance exchange. Source:* *TradingView*.

Forecasts: the asset is expected to reach $100,000 and higher

Against the backdrop of the rally, several market participants have voiced optimistic forecasts for bitcoin. Standard Chartered analyst Geoff Kendrick expects the first cryptocurrency to rise to $100,000 by the end of 2026, while Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong predicts $100,000 by year-end and $300,000–$400,000 by 2030, calling the current period the start of a new bull cycle.

An additional catalyst could be US Treasury policy: the department plans to regularly buy back long-term government bonds, and macro strategist Mark Connors believes that increasing such operations from $4 billion to a potential $10 billion–$30 billion per month could improve liquidity and create conditions for bitcoin to move toward $180,000.

Corporate reserves: Strategy is back in profit, CZ talks about a bitcoin shortage

Bitcoin’s rise allowed Strategy, which holds 840,447 BTC at an average purchase price of $75,385, to exit unrealized losses for the first time since late May. After the asset jumped to a local high of $79,500, its portfolio was valued at about $66.81 billion.

Meanwhile, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao drew attention to the asset’s long-term scarcity: by his estimate, 10–20% of already mined bitcoins may be lost, locked, or otherwise inaccessible, while as of August 2026, 20.07 million BTC had been mined, meaning only 4.4% of the maximum supply remains.

Ethereum

Ethereum climbed to $2,400, and the asset’s weekly gain came in at 25.5%. At the time of writing, Ethereum is trading at $2,416, according to TradingView.

*ETH/USDT chart on the Binance exchange. Source:* *TradingView*.

At the same time, Ethereum developers officially launched a testnet for the major Glamsterdam upgrade, which will change the gas fee calculation mechanism and block production, laying the groundwork for record-breaking loads in the future.

Wallet Security: SafePal Data Leak

Hardware wallet maker SafePal disclosed a data leak that affected about 39,798 customers who placed orders from March 2025 to April 2026. Due to an authorization error, third parties could access names, email addresses, phone numbers, shipping addresses, and purchase details, increasing the risk of targeted phishing attacks. At the same time, seed phrases, private keys, passwords, and users’ payment data, according to the company, were not compromised.

GTA 6 and a Memecoin: Cyberleek Monetizes the Leak

Cyberleek claimed a major leak of GTA 6 materials, publishing gameplay snippets and a draft map of the unreleased game. At the same time, the leak’s authors began promoting the CYBERLEEK memecoin, whose market cap after launching on August 15 nearly reached $4 million, saying they intend to use the funds to finance further activity. Some of the circulated footage may be old, but its authenticity was indirectly supported by Rockstar removing the relevant videos from the web.

Attacks on Blockchain Projects

Several projects faced security incidents at once:

Maya Protocol reported a hack of about $1.7 million, of which roughly $1.34 million was 20 BTC, after which the team halted the system and said it intends to compensate losses and restore the protocol;
MANTRA Chain halted its mainnet and froze transactions due to a vulnerability in a third-party dependency, later isolating the issue in the Cosmos EVM module and stating that users’ funds were not affected;
The Sandbox halted operations on Base and BNB Chain after an attack on the SAND cross-chain bridge, while, according to Blockaid, the attackers nominally minted tokens worth about $49 billion, although the team said that in reality less than 0.01% of the total supply was affected.

Regulation

CLARITY Act in the crypto market

Debate around the CLARITY Act continues over the prospects for its passage and the bill’s substance. The head of the Solana Policy Institute estimated the likelihood of its approval before the congressional elections at just 10%, while U.S. President Donald Trump urged Congress to back the document.

At the same time, Senator Ruben Gallego and expert Hermine Wong criticized the bill, citing a lack of compromise and issues with its current concept — arguing that the document benefits large crypto intermediaries more than users and developers.

New SEC rules and their impact

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a new regulatory regime for crypto assets and token sales that could make it easier to raise capital via ICO in the country. Grayscale believes the new rules could help revive token sales and increase demand for blockchain infrastructure. The company named Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain as potential beneficiaries due to their role in asset tokenization and the development of onchain finance.

Binance and Compliance

Binance found itself in the spotlight following Reuters reports that it had provided Russian authorities with data on client Yuriy Belenkyi, who is accused of financing terrorism through donations in support of Ukraine. Against this backdrop, the exchange’s co-CEO Richard Teng said that Binance cooperates with law enforcement agencies in different countries within the framework of legal procedures and adheres to unified compliance standards. Exchange representatives also stressed that the company does not determine the charges and does not control how governments use the information received in court cases.

Antitrust Investigations and the Tech Business

The US Department of Justice launched an antitrust review of Andreessen Horowitz due to the involvement of its top executives in the governing bodies of companies that compete with each other. This concerns a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz, who sits on the board of directors of Databricks, and partner Martin Casado, who is a member of Fivetran’s leadership. The investigation has been ongoing for about a year and is linked to the review of the deal between Fivetran and dbt Labs, which the US Department of Justice ultimately approved.

Stablecoins

GENIUS Act

The US Department of the Treasury published a draft set of rules to implement the third section of the GENIUS Act, which sets out the conditions for issuing and offering payment stablecoins in the US. The document, in particular, provides rules for foreign issuers and potential liability for exchanges and market makers for facilitating the illegal initial distribution of tokens.

Stablecoins on exchanges

Stablecoin liquidity on centralized exchanges in 2026 fell by about $16 billion — to $64 billion, reflecting a decline in activity amid a bear market. At the same time, Binance increased its share of USDT and USDC reserves to 68.5%, while the decline on other major exchanges was more significant.

Artificial Intelligence

IPO plans for Chinese robot maker Unitree Robotics

The debut of Chinese robot maker Unitree Robotics on the Shanghai Stock Exchange triggered far more hype than crypto traders on Hyperliquid had expected. The company’s shares jumped 629% from the IPO price, and its market cap reached about $66 billion on the first trade, while traders via a perpetual contract valued Unitree at roughly $38 billion. In other words, the crypto market anticipated a major rise in the humanoid robot maker’s valuation, but significantly underestimated the scale of demand for physical AI.

Nvidia investments and major AI deals

Nvidia disclosed ownership of nearly 123 million SpaceX shares worth about $21 billion as of the end of June 2026. The companies deepened their AI collaboration after SpaceX made Nvidia the exclusive provider of AI compute for its data centers. Separately, Nvidia is in talks about investing in AI startup Mercor, whose valuation could reach $20 billion.

Anthropic and OpenAI: valuations and IPOs

Anthropic projects revenue of $190 billion-$200 billion in 2028, which could form the basis for its valuation ahead of a potential IPO. Meanwhile, OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar said the company plans to go public by the end of 2027, possibly earlier.

AI use cases and challenges

The use of AI in the US public sector drew criticism after lawmakers began submitting bills with traces of automated generation, errors, and inaccurate wording. The Office of the Legislative Counsel of the House of Representatives notes that reviewing such documents sometimes takes longer than writing the text from scratch.

At the same time, OKX banned some employees in Hong Kong and China from using Claude after the exchange’s corporate account was blocked, although access was later restored.

AI and cryptocurrencies: the agent economy

OpenLedger called agentic payments a potential first “killer app” at the intersection of crypto and AI, since autonomous agents cannot open bank accounts or pass KYC.

Meanwhile, Arthur Hayes unveiled Flop Network — an agentic economy project with the FLOP token and a Proof-of-Useful-Inference mechanism, slated to launch in early 2027. Both projects view cryptocurrencies as infrastructure for interaction and settlement between AI agents.

Other News:

KPMG audit confirmed that Tether holds around 150 tons of gold
Elon Musk’s X is considering paying royalties to creators and influencers in stablecoins, including USDC
Stripe signed a deal to acquire OpenRouter for more than $7 billion
Google launched a free AI for App Building course
Anthropic introduced Claude Academy for learning how to work with generative models
Justin Sun is openly suing World Liberty Financial
Two Binance employees were detained in the UAE amid an investigation into suspected financial crimes
Ukrainians can convert cryptocurrencies from Kraken into hryvnia and receive cash via MoneyGram
AI agents began competing to improve Ethereum’s proven security
Chainalysis filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government
Robinhood CEO named three advantages of tokenized stocks for US investors
Toyota started selling tokenized bonds via TOYOTA Wallet for the first time

What’s New at Incrypted?

Articles

The Incrypted editorial team broke down how to access different AI models using OpenRouter. You can read more here:

In addition, readers of the closed Incrypted+ community can check out a piece on US government debt, which has reached nearly $40 trillion:

What’s more, the editorial team analyzed how Wall Street is developing traditional finance and the crypto market in parallel:

Our YouTube channel released a video about Warsh’s plan as Fed chair and the altseason chatter.

In Addition…

We put together key investments in blockchain, crypto assets, and AI for July in one piece.
We regularly update the Incrypted crypto calendar, where you’ll find plenty of interesting events and announcements.

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Source: Incrypted