WTI crude fell more than 2% on Monday, 24 August, as market participants took profits amid expectations that the US could announce a new round of sanctions against Iran. Additional pressure came from a warning by the Iranian authority responsible for the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz, which said vessels violating transit rules could face fines or detention.

At the same time, the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), in its 11 August forecast, expects the average Brent price to remain around $85 per barrel in the third quarter. Persistently low commercial crude inventories in the US could also help limit the downside and prevent a deeper decline.

Technical Analysis of WTI

On the four-hour XTI/USD chart, prices had been moving within a short-term uptrend since the beginning of August. The trendline repeatedly acted as support during previous pullbacks, but the price is now attempting to break below it while also moving beneath the lower boundary of the current market profile at $86.05.

If the downside move gains traction, the next potential support area is around $84.40.

A false breakout followed by a renewed advance would bring several technical levels into focus. The first is the Point of Control (POC) at $87.20, followed by the upper profile boundary at $87.95. The overall depth of the market profile is also worth monitoring: the narrower the profile, the less buying pressure may be required to overcome it.

Above the main concentration of trading activity lies the red resistance zone at $91.30.

The RSI + MAs indicator currently shows readings of 48, 57 and 57. RSI has returned to the neutral area following the pullback, but notably remained below the overbought zone throughout virtually the entire uptrend. At the same time, both moving averages remain positive and are holding above the neutral threshold.

Key Takeaways

The break below the ascending trendline has yet to receive confirmation from the momentum indicators. The moving averages remaining above the neutral zone cast some doubt on the sustainability of the current decline.

The next move could depend heavily on the scale and severity of any new US sanctions against Iran. A stronger-than-expected sanctions package could increase pressure on oil prices, while more limited measures may allow the market to refocus on tight US inventories and provide support for WTI.

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A federal jury has convicted Las Vegas businessman Brent Kovar of fraud and money laundering after prosecutors said his Profit Connect operation collected $24 million from at least 400 investors through false claims about cryptocurrency mining, investment returns and company reserves.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada said on Aug. 24 that Kovar was found guilty after a nine-day trial on 11 counts of wire fraud, two counts of mail fraud and two counts of money laundering. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 30 and faces a statutory maximum penalty of 280 years in prison.

Kovar owned Profit Connect from late 2017 through July 2021, presenting the Las Vegas company as a profitable operation that used artificial intelligence software running on a supercomputer to mine cryptocurrency and verify crypto transactions, according to prosecutors.

Investors were promised fixed annual returns of between 15% and 30%, along with a 100% money-back guarantee. Prosecutors said Kovar also claimed Profit Connect was supported by hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrency reserves, despite knowing the company had no such reserves and could not generate the returns being offered.

Brent Kovar used new investor funds for repayments

Federal prosecutors said Profit Connect was not profitable and had no legitimate source of income capable of supporting its promised returns or guarantee.

Instead, Kovar used money received from investors to keep the business operating, purchase gifts for employees and buy a house for himself, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Part of the money was also sent back to existing investors while being presented as proceeds generated through cryptocurrency mining and transaction verification.

The structure allowed Profit Connect to continue making payments despite lacking the investment activity and reserves Kovar had described to customers, according to prosecutors. By the time the operation ended, authorities said at least 400 people had invested a combined $24 million.

During the earlier criminal case, federal prosecutors said Kovar used a website, YouTube video and PowerPoint presentation to market Profit Connect and persuade customers to invest. The business also leased space for a sales office and a warehouse that was presented as a data center. Investments were sold through an entity called Profit Connect Wealth Services.

The original February 2025 indictment charged Kovar with 12 wire fraud counts, three mail fraud counts and three money laundering counts and carried a maximum statutory exposure of 330 years if he were convicted on every charge. Following the trial, the jury returned guilty verdicts on 15 counts, leaving him with a maximum statutory exposure of 280 years.

Prosecutors say Profit Connect sold false guarantees

Investigators focused on several claims used to market the business, including Profit Connect’s stated investment returns and the assertion that investors could recover all of their money.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of Inspector General Special Agent in Charge Ryan Korner said Kovar also lured victims with false claims that the investment was insured by the FDIC.

“Mr. Kovar defrauded investors to enrich himself,” Korner said, adding that investigators would continue working with other agencies to pursue financial fraud cases.

David Lowe, acting special agent in charge of IRS Criminal Investigation’s San Francisco Field Office, said the operation relied on “false guarantees, fabricated profits and nonexistent reserves,” which left investors facing financial losses.

FBI Las Vegas Special Agent in Charge Christopher S. Delzotto said victims believed they were investing in new technology, while prosecutors determined that the investment operation had been built on false representations.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Sigal Chattah said the verdict demonstrated prosecutors’ commitment to pursuing financial fraud involving manipulated records and millions of dollars in investor funds.

IRS Criminal Investigation, the FBI and the FDIC OIG investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Joshua Brister and James Gaeta are prosecuting it, according to the Nevada U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Crypto Ponzi prosecutions have produced mixed outcomes

Kovar’s conviction follows several other U.S. criminal cases involving investment businesses that prosecutors said used cryptocurrency claims to attract investors while directing incoming money toward earlier customers or personal expenses.

A July crypto.news report on the BitClub Network case detailed the Justice Department’s reported move to dismiss charges against founder Matthew Goettsche despite allegations that the crypto mining operation defrauded investors of $722 million. The reported decision would end the prosecution with prejudice if approved by the court.

BitClub had been accused of selling shares in cryptocurrency mining pools while overstating mining returns and using investor money to pay existing participants. The reported move to dismiss the case followed a 2025 Justice Department policy directing prosecutors not to use criminal enforcement as a substitute for digital-asset regulation.

Federal authorities have continued filing fraud cases where prosecutors allege conventional financial crimes involving digital assets.

In February, a report on the Goliath Ventures case covered the arrest of founder and CEO Christopher Alexander Delgado over an alleged $328 million Ponzi scheme. Prosecutors accused Delgado of promoting cryptocurrency liquidity pools that promised consistent monthly returns while directing investor funds toward earlier investors and personal spending.

The Justice Department alleged that Goliath Ventures collected more than $300 million even though only about $1 million was placed into legitimate cryptocurrency assets. Prosecutors said other funds were spent on expenses that included luxury travel, corporate events and multimillion-dollar homes.

Other cases have centered on promised crypto returns

Federal prosecutors brought another case in June against Tennessee resident Misam Abidi over an alleged $1.9 million scheme operated through Star Credit Holdings.

Court documents cited in coverage of the Star Credit Holdings case accused Abidi of making false statements about investment returns, company reserves and assets under management between 2020 and 2024. The charges included wire fraud, money laundering, operating an unlicensed money-transmitting business and filing false tax returns.

Separate federal actions have also moved from prosecution toward victim recovery. In April, the Justice Department opened a compensation process backed by more than $40 million in forfeited assets for people who lost money in OneCoin, according to coverage of the OneCoin victim fund.

Federal prosecutors have estimated that OneCoin took more than $4 billion from roughly 3.5 million people between 2014 and 2019. Co-founder Karl Sebastian Greenwood received a 20-year federal prison sentence in 2023, while fellow founder Ruja Ignatova remains a fugitive and is listed among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted.

Kovar’s sentence will be determined by a federal district court judge after consideration of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors, with the sentencing hearing currently set for Nov. 30, 2026.

An attacker bought a controlling stake in a DAO governance token for less than $1,000, passed malicious proposals, and drained $8.5 million from strategy vaults. The exploit exposes a vulnerability that most DeFi protocols have not patched.

The math is the story. An attacker spent $951 on governance tokens for a protocol that held $12.45 million in depositor funds. That $951 bought enough voting power to control four USDC strategy vaults and approximately 91% of the Ethereum Meta Vault. The attacker submitted proposals to move the funds, voted on those proposals with the tokens just purchased, and watched the vaults transfer $8.5 million to a wallet seeded with 2 ETH from Tornado Cash.

Every step was legal from the protocol’s perspective. The governance contracts worked exactly as designed. The proposals were submitted correctly, the votes were counted accurately, and the vault transfers executed precisely as the governance system instructed. The problem was not that the code broke. The problem was that the code did what it was told by someone who spent less than $1,000 to become its highest authority.

Term Labs confirmed the exploit on X on August 23, 2026. Security firms PeckShield and CertiK independently verified the incident and traced the stolen funds to attacker address 0xD5183d8BfC65a50863C62aF2538198A8288FFc13. The protocol’s on chain monitoring bot, Decurity’s Defimon, flagged the unusual transactions first.

Franklin Templeton has expanded access to its tokenized U.S. government money market fund in Asia through a new distribution partnership with Hong Kong-licensed HashKey Exchange.

HashKey Holdings said on Aug. 24 that its licensed trading platform has added the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Liquidity Fund, known as grBENJI, to the HashKey Exchange Earn channel, giving eligible digital asset investors access to the product through blockchain-based infrastructure.

The fund invests mainly in U.S. government money market instruments and U.S. dollar cash assets. Access in Hong Kong is restricted to professional investors, and the product cannot be offered to the general public, according to HashKey.

The arrangement gives Franklin Templeton another distribution channel for its tokenized investment products in Asia while adding an established asset manager’s money market product to HashKey’s regulated investment platform.

Chetan Karkhanis, Franklin Templeton’s senior vice president of digital assets client engagement, said the listing gives the firm access to HashKey’s digital banking, wealth management and institutional client base.

“We are excited to launch our tokenized money market fund on the HashKey Exchange platform,” Karkhanis said, adding that blockchain technology provides investors with “enhanced transparency, security, accessibility, speed, and cost efficiency.”

Franklin Templeton plans more tokenized products with HashKey

Following the grBENJI rollout, Franklin Templeton and HashKey plan to explore additional tokenized investment products and asset classes across several markets.

Karkhanis said the companies expect to expand their relationship past money market funds, using HashKey’s operations in Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Dubai and Bermuda as potential distribution points.

“We look forward to deepening this partnership by expanding beyond tokenized money market funds into other tokenized products over time,” he said.

HashKey Exchange BG CEO Haiyang Ru said the addition of grBENJI responds to institutional demand for compliant yield products backed by real-world assets. He described the partnership as a way to combine traditional investment products with regulated digital asset infrastructure.

HashKey Exchange operates under Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission with Type 1 and Type 7 licenses under the Securities and Futures Ordinance, along with a license under the Anti-Money Laundering Ordinance, according to the company. HashKey said it does not provide services to users in mainland China, the United States and certain other jurisdictions.

The exchange has previously worked on regulated tokenized securities in Hong Kong. In June 2025, HashKey Chain and GF Securities Hong Kong launched GF Token, a security issued, recorded and managed on-chain, with HashKey Exchange serving as one of its distribution channels for qualified investors.

Franklin Templeton has expanded its Asia tokenization business

The HashKey deal follows Franklin Templeton’s earlier introduction of a tokenized money market product in Hong Kong.

In November 2025, crypto.news reported the Hong Kong launch of the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund, which gave institutional and accredited investors access to short-term U.S. government debt.

The fund had been registered in Luxembourg and was launched in Hong Kong with support from HSBC and digital asset platform OSL. At the time, Franklin Templeton’s APAC head Tariq Ahmad said the asset manager also planned to pursue a version that could eventually be offered to retail investors, subject to approval from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission.

Franklin Templeton has continued adding distribution and trading routes for its tokenized products during 2026.

In June, the asset manager added BENJI to MoonPay, allowing institutional users to swap stablecoins including USDC and USDT for the tokenized money market product through MoonPay Trade’s on-chain system.

Days later, Franklin Templeton completed its acquisition of 250 Digital, creating a new Franklin Crypto division that combined the acquired firm’s investment team and strategies with Franklin Templeton’s existing digital asset operations.

The June report put Franklin Templeton’s assets under management at $1.78 trillion and said RWA.xyz data showed the firm’s tokenized assets had increased from about $768 million in June 2025 to more than $2.5 billion within a year.

HashKey’s latest announcement put Franklin Templeton’s total assets under management at $1.80 trillion as of July 31, with operations spanning more than 35 countries.

Tokenized funds are moving into more distribution channels

Franklin Templeton has also used partnerships with blockchain and financial technology companies to place traditional investment products inside crypto-native systems.

Through a partnership with Ondo Finance, the asset manager introduced tokenized ETFs designed to trade around the clock through crypto wallets. The product lineup covered U.S. equities, fixed income and gold for eligible non-U.S. investors across Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.

Franklin Templeton has separately worked with Binance on an institutional collateral structure that lets clients use tokenized money market fund shares as collateral for crypto trading while keeping the underlying assets with regulated custodians.

Demand for tokenized government debt has increased alongside that institutional activity. RWA.xyz data cited in the supplied report showed the total value of tokenized real-world assets at $38.2 billion as of Aug. 23, compared with $20.6 billion one year earlier.

Tokenized U.S. Treasury debt accounted for about $15.6 billion of that total, making government securities one of the largest categories within the on-chain RWA market.

For HashKey, grBENJI adds another yield-bearing product to its Earn channel while extending an existing focus on tokenized financial instruments. Franklin Templeton said the two companies will continue assessing additional tokenized products following the Aug. 24 launch.

Binance Futures launched five USDT-margined TradFi perpetual contracts on Aug. 25, giving eligible traders leveraged exposure to Trump Media, Moderna and three semiconductor-focused exchange-traded funds.

The contracts began trading at five-minute intervals between 09:00 and 09:20 UTC. Binance listed SKUUUSDT, SKDDUSDT, RAMUSDT, DJTUSDT and MRNAUSDT with maximum leverage of 20x.

Binance adds five U.S. market-linked contracts

SKUUUSDT tracks the GraniteShares 2x Long SK Hynix Daily ETF, while SKDDUSDT references the issuer’s 2x Short SK Hynix Daily ETF. Both underlying funds trade on Nasdaq.

The long fund seeks twice the daily percentage change in SK Hynix’s U.S.-listed depositary receipt. The short fund seeks twice the inverse daily return, according to GraniteShares’ product details.

RAMUSDT references the Roundhill T-REX 2X Long DRAM Daily Target ETF, which trades on Cboe BZX. RAM targets twice the daily performance of the Roundhill Memory ETF rather than directly holding or tracking a single semiconductor company.

DJTUSDT follows Trump Media & Technology Group shares, while MRNAUSDT references Moderna. Both companies trade on Nasdaq under DJT and MRNA.

The contracts provide derivatives, not stock ownership

The five Binance products are perpetual derivatives priced and settled in USDT. Traders do not receive shares, voting rights, dividends or ownership interests in the referenced companies or ETFs.

Perpetual contracts do not have expiry dates. Binance uses funding payments between long and short traders to help keep contract prices aligned with their reference markets.

Each contract has a minimum trade size of 0.01 units and a minimum notional value of 5 USDT. Funding fees settle every eight hours, while the initial funding-rate cap is set at +2% and the floor at -2%.

The exchange said the normal rule allowing funding intervals to change from eight hours to one hour when rates reach their limits will not apply automatically. The exchange will issue a separate announcement if it changes that schedule.

Layered leverage increases trading risk

SKUU, SKDD and RAM are already leveraged ETFs designed around daily investment objectives. Applying up to 20x leverage through a perpetual contract creates an additional layer of exposure.

Daily leveraged funds can produce returns that differ greatly from a simple multiple of the underlying asset over longer periods. Compounding, volatility and daily resets can reduce returns even when the referenced asset moves in the expected direction.

Binance’s leverage can further accelerate profits and losses. A relatively small adverse price movement may trigger liquidation if a trader lacks enough margin to maintain the position.

These risks remain present outside U.S. stock-market hours. Binance offers the contracts continuously, while the referenced shares and ETFs trade during scheduled exchange sessions. Prices can therefore diverge when Nasdaq and Cboe BZX are closed.

The rollout follows a wider exchange push into 24/7 synthetic exposure to traditional assets. Bybit said its own TradFi perpetual range recently passed 200 products, including equities, ETFs, commodities and private companies.

Binance’s ADGM entities operate the products

The contracts were admitted to trading on the exchange RIE and to clearing and settlement through Binance RCH, according to the exchange’s notice.

The company RIE is operated by Nest Exchange Limited, which the Abu Dhabi Global Market’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority recognizes as an investment exchange for derivatives. Nest Clearing and Custody Limited operates Binance RCH as a recognized clearing house.

The regulatory structure does not make the products available everywhere. Binance cautioned that access depends on the user’s location and applicable restrictions. The contracts reference U.S.-listed securities, but they are not direct Nasdaq or Cboe trades.

Binance may change leverage, margin, funding and other trading parameters under its exchange and clearing rules. No separate deadline or additional launch phase was announced.

There was no verified market movement in DJT, Moderna or the three ETFs that could be attributed specifically to the Binance listings.