GSR increased Bitcoin’s allocation in its Core3 model portfolio on Aug. 5 as trading activity slowed and volatility eased across Bitcoin, Ether and Solana.

The latest Core3 model portfolio assigned 44.1% to Ether, 36.5% to Solana and 19.3% to Bitcoin. The weights total 99.9% because GSR rounds each allocation.

Despite Bitcoin receiving the smallest weight, it remained the strongest of the three assets in 2026. BTC had lost 24.82% year to date. Ether was down 35.49%, while Solana recorded the deepest decline at 40.21%.

Over one year, Bitcoin fell 47.08%, compared with losses of 44.73% for Ether and 54.89% for Solana. The figures show broad weakness across the three assets rather than a decline isolated to one blockchain.

GSR Core3 model shifts toward Bitcoin

GSR said market conditions remained subdued during the latest week. Price changes were modest, while trading activity and volatility declined. The firm interpreted those conditions as a quieter market without a strong directional trend.

As a result, the model raised its Bitcoin allocation and cut its Ether position. GSR attributed the change to proprietary signals rather than recent price performance alone.

The shift is clearer when compared with GSR’s July 15 allocation. At that point, the model held 53.1% in Ether, 37.6% in Solana and only 9.2% in Bitcoin. Bitcoin’s weight therefore rose 10.1 percentage points by Aug. 5, while Ether’s fell nine points.

Ether still delivered the strongest return over the most recent 30 days, gaining 5.16%. Bitcoin rose 1.26%, while Solana lost 9.64%. However, GSR said the lower Ether weighting indicated “relatively stronger forward looking opportunities elsewhere.”

That assessment is a model based view, not a confirmed prediction of future returns. GSR said the portfolio uses quantitative signals that can change as prices, volume and volatility move.

Solana leads losses despite falling volatility

Solana’s 40.21% year to date decline was the largest among the Core3 assets. It also lost 54.89% over one year, compared with the portfolio’s 57.78% decline.

However, SOL produced the best weekly result, rising 1.86%. Bitcoin gained 1.19%, while Ether fell 0.54%. The mixed figures support GSR’s description of a market with limited short term direction.

Solana’s measured volatility also eased sharply. Its 30 day volatility stood at 37.39%, below Ether’s 41.69%, although still above Bitcoin’s 29.89%. Solana’s 60 day reading remained higher at 54.92%, showing that its calmer recent trading followed a more unstable period.

Solana previously approached support near $60 after whale selling, weaker decentralized finance activity and market liquidations weighed on the asset. The network’s planned upgrades continued to support its longer term development case, but they had not prevented sharp token losses.

The broader weakness also extended beyond SOL. As previously reported, the crypto market excluding Bitcoin and Ether lost almost 23% during the first half of 2026. The decline occurred even as some blockchain networks continued recording strong usage.

Core3 trails a basket weighted equally

The Core3 portfolio lost 37.86% year to date and 57.78% over one year. An alternative portfolio allocating equal amounts to Bitcoin, Ether and Solana declined 33.99% and 49.84% over the same periods.

Core3 therefore trailed the equally weighted basket by 3.87 percentage points in 2026 and 7.94 points over one year. Its larger exposure to Ether and Solana increased losses when those assets fell more sharply than Bitcoin.

The result also shows the difference between a changing allocation model and a passive basket. The model attempts to adjust exposure based on GSR’s signals. An equally weighted portfolio simply maintains broadly similar exposure to all three assets.

Earlier allocations show that those signals can change rapidly. On July 8, GSR held 46.7% in Ether, 40.1% in Solana and 13.1% in Bitcoin after Ether led weekly performance and volatility declined.

Ether has struggled against Bitcoin during 2026, with the ETH to BTC ratio reaching multiyear lows. Institutional demand concentrated in Bitcoin, competition from Solana and questions over Ether’s value capture have weighed on its relative performance.

What traders will watch next

GSR’s next weekly allocation will show whether the model continues moving toward Bitcoin or reverses the shift. Trading volume, relative momentum and changes in volatility will remain central to that decision.

The model’s 30 day volatility stood at 38%, compared with 35.87% for the equally weighted basket. Its 60 day volatility was slightly lower than the comparison portfolio, at 42.64% versus 43.69%.

Investors should also distinguish the model results from returns available through a live investment strategy. GSR said its figures are hypothetical, exclude transaction and management fees and do not include staking rewards.

The firm also said the material is intended for professional investors and does not constitute investment advice. GSR may trade the assets for its own account, take positions that differ from its published commentary and sponsor products using related methods.

Those disclosures matter because the portfolio’s allocations are not neutral market forecasts. They reflect a proprietary framework whose positions and past returns may not translate into future performance.

Mysten Labs cofounder and chief technology officer Sam Blackshear said on Aug. 6 that he is leaving the Sui developer to join Anthropic for defensive security research. 

Blackshear announced the move in posts on X, saying the role would let him return to hands on technical work while studying a new problem area. He did not disclose his starting date, reporting line or specific projects at Anthropic.

Blackshear said he was motivated by a period in which the “balance of power between attackers and defenders is shifting.” The comment is his assessment, not a measured industry result. However, Anthropic’s recent research supports the broader concern. The company said Claude Opus 4.6 could identify high severity software vulnerabilities at scale, while its Frontier Red Team studies how advanced models could strengthen defense and offensive activity.

Blackshear will remain involved with Mysten and Sui

Blackshear said he would remain a close adviser to Mysten Labs and respond to Sui ecosystem builders who seek his help. Mysten’s leadership page identified him as a cofounder and CTO before the announcement, alongside cofounder and chief executive Evan Cheng. Blackshear said Cheng will now set the company’s technical vision, although Mysten had not published a separate succession statement.

The departing executive credited Cheng with recruiting many of Mysten’s strongest technical employees and noted his previous leadership experience at Apple and Meta. Blackshear also thanked Mysten Labs staff and the wider Sui community. His advisory role may provide continuity, but the company has not disclosed whether it will appoint another CTO or redistribute his duties.

Mysten was founded by former Meta engineers and became the original contributor to the Sui layer one blockchain.

Mysten Labs partnered with Google Cloud to use generative AI in code development and auditing. The collaboration included tools trained on Move and an AI based auditing system designed to identify vulnerabilities in Move, Rust, TypeScript and Solidity code. That work placed artificial intelligence and blockchain security within Mysten’s strategy before Blackshear joined Anthropic.

Move Foundation plans remain at an early stage

Blackshear created Move while working at Meta and has spent more than eight years developing the language. Sui Foundation materials describe Move as a smart contract language designed around ownership, scarcity and safer handling of digital assets. Its resource model aims to prevent certain programming errors, while Sui’s version adds an object centered structure and programmable transaction blocks.

Blackshear said a Move Foundation is “in the works” and that he hopes to remain involved. The statement is forward looking. He did not provide a launch date, governance structure, leadership team or funding plan. It is also unclear whether the proposed foundation would oversee the language across several blockchains or focus on narrower technical standards.

A separate foundation could provide a neutral forum for language development, documentation and governance. Still, no official organization or timetable accompanied Blackshear’s departure, so its eventual scope remains uncertain.

In related coverage, the $260 million Cetus Protocol exploit showed that a secure programming language cannot remove every application level risk. Researchers said the affected contracts executed permitted instructions, while the failure involved pricing and liquidity controls above the language layer. The incident showed why smart contract safety also depends on protocol design, monitoring and operational response.

Anthropic is expanding defensive security research

Blackshear joins Anthropic as the company increases research into AI enabled cyber threats. Anthropic reported in June that it studied 832 accounts linked to malicious activity and mapped their behavior across the MITRE ATT&CK framework. It said it banned those accounts and found AI assistance across reconnaissance, malware development, evasion and other attack stages.

Anthropic is also testing defensive uses of its models. Project Glasswing brought together about 50 partners to search critical software for vulnerabilities, while separate work with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory used Claude in simulated attacks on a water treatment system. These company reported results do not prove defenders will consistently stay ahead, but they show the research field Blackshear is entering.

Blackshear’s background in programming languages, static analysis and automated bug finding fits that work. Before Mysten, he worked on Move and related security tools at Meta. Sui’s official archive identifies him as Move’s creator and a former principal engineer at the company.

What happens next depends on announcements from Anthropic and Mysten Labs. Anthropic has not detailed Blackshear’s team or research agenda. Mysten has not confirmed a replacement CTO. Developers will also watch whether the proposed Move Foundation receives formal leadership, funding and a launch schedule.

Alex Kuptsikevich of FxPro said in an email that bitcoin has gained momentum since Monday, when buyers stepped in during the dip toward $62,500 and pushed price back above the 50-day moving average. Optimism is centred more on bitcoin than on the wider market, he said, which is typical of the early stages of a long-term shift.

The equity backdrop turned less helpful. The MSCI All Country World Index snapped a five-day run to fall 0.2% as chipmakers retreated on both sides of the Pacific. Korea’s Kospi, a bellwether for the AI trade, dropped 4.4% with SK Hynix and Samsung leading losses.

S&P 500 and European futures edged higher.

Meanwhile, Gold rose 0.4% to its strongest since June as traders trimmed rate-hike expectations, with Brent under $80 a barrel after Iran said it had reached an agreement with Oman on a shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz.

SoftBank reports later Thursday. It has put $34.6 billion into OpenAI through Vision Fund 2 since September 2024 and owns chip designer Arm, so its numbers are read as a gauge of whether the private side of the AI trade is holding up.

US-listed spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are attracting fresh capital as a high-profile cryptocurrency custody incident puts renewed focus on digital asset security.

Spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $211.5 million in net inflows on Tuesday, adding to Monday’s $170 million, according to data from SoSoValue.

The inflows came as the ongoing Coldcard hack drew attention from analysts, with Galaxy Research estimating that the attack may have affected as many as 7,300 addresses and resulted in about $130 million in suspected Bitcoin (BTC) losses from users of the hardware wallet.

The developments have renewed a long-running debate in crypto over whether institutional custody solutions offered through regulated financial products could become more attractive as investors weigh the risks and responsibilities of self-custody.

Galaxy ETF returns to inflows as Bitcoin funds rebound

BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) led the ETF recovery, recording $111 million in inflows on Monday and $170 million on Tuesday, according to Farside Investors data. Fidelity’s Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) followed, adding about $33 million and roughly $20 million on the respective days.

Invesco Galaxy Bitcoin ETF (BTCO) recorded $6.7 million in inflows on Monday, marking its first positive daily flow since July 1. The inflow represented about 3.9% of BTCO’s cumulative net inflows of $172 million, according to Farside.

Source: Galaxy Research

Galaxy Research, the research arm of crypto investment company Galaxy Digital, has emerged as one of the most prominent sources tracking the Coldcard incident. Alex Thorn, Galaxy Digital’s head of firmwide research, and his team have regularly published estimates on affected addresses and potential losses linked to the incident.

Coldcard hack gives new weight to Bitcoin ETF custody argument

Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, said the Coldcard hack could encourage greater migration toward Bitcoin ETFs, as investors reconsider the role of institutional custody.

In a post on Tuesday, Balchunas said ETFs’ reliance on traditional financial institutions to safeguard assets could increasingly be seen as an advantage. He wrote that what was once considered a “bug” by some crypto users may “all the sudden seem like a feature” as investors compare institutional custodians with smaller crypto companies.

Related: Boltz pauses service after wave of AI-assisted hacking attempts

Separately, Balchunas also pointed to broader changes in the ETF market, including the closure of Hashdex’s spot Bitcoin ETF and BlackRock’s planned reverse split for its Ethereum ETF.

BTC steady as traders weigh custody concerns

Bitcoin remained relatively stable as traders assessed the Coldcard incident and other sources of selling pressure, including the latest 1,638 BTC sale by Michael Saylor’s Strategy.

At publishing time, BTC traded at $64,113, down around 0.8% over the past seven days, according to CoinGecko. The asset’s lowest price during that period fell below $62,500.

Source: Bitcoin Munger

Some observers argued that those behind the Coldcard incident may face challenges moving or converting the affected funds because Bitcoin transactions can be publicly tracked. Crypto commentator Shagun wrote in an X post on Sunday that large fund movements would likely attract scrutiny from blockchain researchers, exchanges and other market participants.

Magazine: Sorry everyone, Bitcoin is headed down to $43,500: Michael Terpin

Token deployments across the chain’s launchpads have fallen from roughly 35,000 per day in mid-July to about 10,000, according to data. Noxa still holds around $137,000 of CASHCAT and has not sold; its balance has been flat over the past week while the value has risen 75%.

CASHCAT’s own distribution has broadened. DEXTools data shows the token has about 41,200 holders, the full 989 million supply is circulating with no locked allocation, and the largest single holder is the Uniswap pool providing its liquidity, at 2.47%.

The biggest wallets below that hold between 1.3% and 1.5% each. That pool holds $5 million, down from the $6.6 million backing a $105 million valuation in July, but still deeper than any other memecoin pool on the chain.

Deposits kept climbing through it all. Total value locked stands at $774 million, up 20% over seven days, with lending at 43% and asset management 41.5%. Two protocols hold nearly three-quarters of it: Morpho, at $332 million, is the lending market behind Robinhood’s own onchain earn product. Ethena, with $236 million in assets, issues a dollar-pegged token that pays holders a yield. Stablecoins on the chain total $575 million, up 14% from the week prior.

Meta has become the latest major AI company to disclose that one of its models hacked another company’s systems during testing, following similar incidents involving Anthropic and OpenAI. 

The model involved Meta’s Muse Spark 1.1, which launched in July, according to The Information, citing sources. The issue reportedly stemmed from a misconfiguration by Irregular, an artificial intelligence security testing and red-teaming firm, which inadvertently gave the model internet access during an evaluation.  

The model “exploited a security vulnerability in a third-party service, in a manner similar to previously reported instances with other companies,” Meta told Reuters in a statement. 

The incident is the latest case of an advanced AI agent becoming a cybersecurity risk in its own right, and also has raised questions about where the liability lies — the companies that develop the agents, or the ones that design the sandboxes meant to contain them. 

Related: Mysten Labs tech chief joins Anthropic to work on AI security

Meta’s AI breach comes just a week after Anthropic said its models got access to the internet to hack an external company, due to a configuration error relating to the Irregular’s testing environment.

In a blog post on July 30, Anthropic said it found three incidents (out of 141,006 evaluation runs) in which a Claude model reached the internet during an evaluation, before gaining unauthorized access to the systems within three different organizations. 

All three incidents happened within or while interacting with the evaluation environment of Irregular, and involved a misconfiguration that left machines that Claude accessed with live internet access.

Cointelegraph reached out to Meta and Irregular for comment.

In July, AI agents developed by OpenAI broke out of their offline sandbox to hack Hugging Face in order to cheat on a security benchmark test in July. 

Charles Guillemet, chief technology officer of Ledger, said the latest incident was “marketing theatre.”

“Having a model ‘go rogue’ has become the latest AI PR stunt,” he said on Wednesday.

“If your model isn’t escaping sandboxes, ‘hacking’ companies, or pulling off some headline-grabbing exploit, apparently you’re falling behind… The industry doesn’t need bigger stunts, it needs more trust.”

Magazine: Do the Coldcard attacks mean all hardware wallets are now insecure?

Say the four things that matter most

Western Union is making a significant push into blockchain-enabled payments with the launch of Stablecard, a Visa-branded wallet that lets customers hold, receive, transfer, and spend a US dollar-backed stablecoin. The company says the product is designed to bring dollar-denominated balances into everyday spending for people using remittance flows.

In an announcement on Wednesday, Western Union said Stablecard will support USDPT—an American dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by Anchorage Digital Bank on the Solana blockchain. The wallet-based system is positioned for remittance recipients and consumers in markets where local currency volatility makes it harder to confidently hold savings.

Key takeaways

• Stablecard brings USDPT stablecoin support into a Visa-branded spending flow for users in the 37 markets where it launched.
• Western Union is using stablecoin rails to support on-ramps from remittances, wallet transfers, and payment spending where Visa is accepted.
• USDPT is issued by Anchorage Digital Bank and runs on Solana, tying the wallet to existing cryptocurrency infrastructure.
• Western Union plans to expand Stablecard availability to more than 60 markets by the end of the year.
• The rollout aligns with Western Union’s broader digital asset strategy and its earlier decision to introduce USDPT.

Stablecard: turning USDPT into spendable value

Stablecard is presented as both a digital wallet and a payment method. According to Western Union, users can receive funds directly into a USDPT wallet—built around the stablecoin—then transfer those balances to compatible crypto wallets and exchanges. From there, the same USDPT balance can be spent anywhere Visa is accepted.

Western Union also highlighted that spending can occur through existing digital payment channels connected to Visa, including Apple Pay and Google Pay. For investors and users watching stablecoin adoption beyond trading, this is one of the clearer examples of stablecoins being integrated into a mainstream payments brand rather than remaining confined to crypto-native apps.

The product is intended to address a common challenge in cross-border payments: recipients often receive funds in local currencies that may be volatile, while traditional remittance providers typically deliver payments that are quickly spent or converted. By letting users hold a US dollar-backed asset and use it through familiar payment networks, Stablecard aims to give users more flexibility in how they manage funds.

Market rollout and what it signals for remittance competition

Western Union stated that Stablecard launched in 37 markets, with plans to expand to more than 60 markets by the end of the year. That expansion goal matters because it suggests the company views the product as more than a pilot—aiming to scale stablecoin-backed payments in meaningful geographies.

The move also reflects intensifying competition in money transfers. Stablecoins have increasingly been explored as rails for cross-border transfers, with the industry betting that dollar-pegged tokens can improve speed and reduce certain costs compared with older systems. For established remittance companies, stablecoin integration becomes a strategic attempt to modernize their infrastructure while keeping customer-facing touchpoints familiar.

Western Union’s rival MoneyGram has made a similar bet. Earlier coverage from Cointelegraph noted that MoneyGram launched MGUSD, a US dollar-pegged stablecoin on the Stellar network. In that setup, users can use a self-custodial wallet to hold dollar-denominated balances, send funds globally, and convert to local currencies when needed. Stablecard’s Visa-centered design is different in execution, but it points to the same competitive direction: remittance providers increasingly want stablecoins to help move value, not just settle transactions.

USDPT, Solana, and the regulatory framing

Stablecard’s stablecoin is USDPT, issued by Anchorage Digital Bank on the Solana blockchain. Western Union previously unveiled USDPT in May as part of a broader digital asset strategy, describing it as aligned with the framework established under the GENIUS Act—a recently enacted US law that sets federal rules for the issuance and oversight of payment stablecoins. That regulatory framing is important for long-term adoption, because it signals an effort to fit stablecoin issuance and distribution into clearer compliance expectations.

Western Union has also described ecosystem expansion around USDPT through exchange integrations. Cointelegraph reported earlier that Bybit added support for USDPT trading and transfers in June. These types of partnerships can be particularly relevant to usability: stablecoin wallets and payment systems become more valuable when users can also move balances between consumer apps, self-custody tools, and exchanges.

Why stablecoins still face friction in practice

Despite the momentum, stablecoin remittances are not automatically cheaper or faster in all cases. A recent Bank of Italy study, covered by Cointelegraph, found that stablecoin-based remittances did not consistently outperform traditional payment channels in cost or speed. Researchers pointed to a key bottleneck: friction often remains in fiat on- and off-ramps—converting between bank deposits, cash, and digital assets—where a large portion of settlement delays and transaction costs can still occur.

That observation matters for how to interpret Stablecard’s launch. A wallet that enables receiving and spending can reduce certain steps for users who can transact within the same payment ecosystem, but it doesn’t eliminate conversion challenges across borders. What will likely determine whether stablecoin remittances scale smoothly is how effectively providers integrate stablecoin rails with fiat access points, including local compliance, bank transfers, and cash-out routes.

In that context, Stablecard’s decision to connect stablecoin balances to Visa acceptance could be a practical lever. Rather than requiring a near-immediate conversion to local currency before spending, the product offers a way to use dollar-pegged value directly through established payment acceptance—potentially reducing the number of conversions some users need to make.

As stablecoins continue to expand their role in global payments, the next question for users and market participants is not only how many markets launch, but how well the on-ramps and off-ramps work in practice—especially under real-world load, local banking constraints, and changing compliance requirements.