The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposed new rules aimed at streamlining the process of raising money through cryptocurrency sales. If adopted, the proposal would lower the compliance threshold and reduce the complexity for crypto projects conducting token offerings in the U.S. market. The original report specifically highlighted the Ethereum Foundation in connection with the news.

Aave’s total value locked (TVL) remains down 43% since the April 18 KelpDAO hack, and is 67% below its 52-week high. Hackers deposited stolen rsETH into Aave and borrowed real ETH against it, leaving Aave and Compound with an estimated $246 million in combined bad debt. Aave’s TVL fell from $26.4 billion before the attack to $14.9 billion, tightening lending capacity and increasing volatility pressure. The AAVE token fell about 20% the day after the incident and now trades near $89, still below pre-hack levels.

HIVE Digital Technologies used its fiscal first-quarter 2027 earnings call on Aug. 17 to emphasize it is expanding beyond Bitcoin mining into AI-focused computing. The company said it signed a five-year agreement with an unnamed investment-grade enterprise customer worth about $350 million, covering 2,016 Nvidia GB300 chips and adding about $70 million in annual recurring revenue. It said the deal brought contracted GPU cloud revenue to about $180 million, nearing its $200 million year-end target, while the segment accounted for roughly 10% of quarterly revenue versus 90% from Bitcoin mining.

Polymarket data put the CLARITY Act market at about 20% Yes. An anonymous trader holds a No position worth about $414,895, roughly 2.6 times the $160,200 in displayed liquidity. The account deposited about $499,999 in USDC and spent roughly $398,122 across three trades to build 515,398 No shares, leaving about $101,877 unspent. With limited depth, a single large order could materially reprice the odds.

Ethereum-based DeFi protocol OLY is set to open its token mint on Aug. 28, structuring rewards around protocol revenue rather than ongoing token issuance. The system routes income to stakers, liquidity, ETH-based vaults and OLY buybacks and burns. Market sellers start with a dynamic 10% fee that is designed to step down to 4% as market capitalization rises, while limit orders carry a 2% fee and some liquidity exits are fee-free. Of ETH revenue, 34% is allocated to a staked ETH vault, 16% each to liquidity defense, a liquidity vault, direct staker payments and OLY buyback-and-burn, with the remaining 2% going to Genesis.

Binance has cut off funding transfer channels for HTX and 10 other platforms to comply with European Union sanctions. The restriction targets deposits and withdrawals rather than trading itself, meaning HTX’s order books can continue operating. HTX has disclosed 59.49 million registered accounts, but only about 420,000 spot-trading accounts were active over the past six months. The sanctions backdrop includes allegations that HTX provided financial services to A7 LLC, a Russian payment network sanctioned by the UK Treasury that officials say moved more than $90 billion last year and is linked to a sanctioned Moldovan politician and a Russian bank.

Deposits of real-world assets (RWA) deployed in decentralized finance protocols stood at $3.98 billion as of August 18, nearing the $4 billion mark. The figure was $650.88 million a year earlier and about $12 million three years ago. That represents roughly a sixfold increase over the past 12 months, according to DefiLlama data.

Wall Street trading firm Jane Street disclosed in an SEC filing that it holds more than $990 million worth of Bitcoin ETFs. The disclosure points to deep participation by a top traditional financial institution in the Bitcoin market.