Ethereum price climbed 3% to about $2,397 on Aug. 21 after reaching an intraday high near $2,448, extending a breakout driven by ETF inflows, short liquidations and stronger risk appetite.

Ethereum price action today

According to data from crypto.news, Ethereum (ETH) price opened at $2,327 on Aug. 21 before climbing to $2,448 and settling near $2,397 at the time of writing. The 3% daily increase followed a much larger move that carried ETH from below $2,000 to more than $2,300 within two sessions.

The rally pushed Ethereum through several levels that had limited gains since April, including the $2,000 psychological barrier and the $2,250 resistance area. ETH also cleared the $2,375 Murrey Math level on the 4-hour chart, although the price was struggling to hold above it after its rejection near $2,450.

Momentum remained strong on the shorter timeframe. The 4-hour Awesome Oscillator rose to 329.16 and printed an expanding series of green bars, indicating that upward momentum had not yet weakened meaningfully.

However, the daily chart showed that ETH had moved far outside its previous trading range. The price was trading about 5.5% above the upper Bollinger Band at $2,272, while the indicator’s middle band remained near $1,957.

What is driving the Ethereum rally?

US spot Ether ETFs recorded $189 million in net inflows on Aug. 19, their strongest daily intake since October 2025, according to SoSoValue data. BlackRock’s ETHA accounted for about $122 million of that total.

The ETF purchases arrived as Ethereum broke above $2,000, forcing traders with leveraged short positions to close their bets. CoinGlass data cited by Invezz showed that more than $1 billion in Ether shorts were liquidated during the initial breakout, contributing to a wider crypto liquidation event that exceeded $3 billion.

The supplied one-week CoinGlass heatmap shows how ETH moved rapidly through liquidation clusters between $1,900 and $2,300. Forced purchases associated with short liquidations likely added to the speed of the advance, although the breakout also coincided with new spot demand from US-listed funds.

Macro conditions provided another catalyst after the US Treasury announced that it would at least double the maximum size of buybacks for longer-dated nominal securities from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation. The change will begin on Sept. 9 and remain in place through Nov. 4.

Investors interpreted the announcement as support for bond-market liquidity. Treasury yields and the US dollar subsequently weakened, helping Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other risk assets extend their gains.

Ethereum faces overbought signals below $2,500

Ethereum’s immediate resistance sits between $2,448 and $2,500. The lower boundary marked the Aug. 21 intraday high, while the Murrey Math chart identifies $2,500 as the next major resistance level.

A sustained break above $2,500 could expose $2,625, followed by $2,750. The chart places stronger reversal risk near $2,875, although ETH would need additional demand to reach those levels after such a steep move.

Daily momentum presents the main short-term risk. Ethereum’s 14-day relative strength index jumped to 86.12, well above the 70 level commonly associated with overbought conditions. The reading does not guarantee a reversal, but it shows that prices have advanced much faster than their recent trend.

The CoinGlass heatmap identifies nearby liquidation concentrations between approximately $2,270 and $2,350. A failure to clear $2,450 could therefore send ETH back toward $2,375, followed by the $2,300–$2,250 area.

The $2,000 level remains the larger breakout support. The daily Bollinger Band midpoint near $1,957 and a dense heatmap cluster around $1,990 strengthen that zone, although a decline that deep would erase much of the latest advance.

Analysts watch the $2,450 weekly close

Crypto analyst Ted Pillows identified $2,450 as Ethereum’s next resistance zone. He said a weekly close above that area could open a move toward $3,000, making the upcoming close important for confirming whether the breakout can continue.

Market analyst Rain said ETH gained 17.1% during the initial daily surge and pushed its weekly advance beyond 20% after clearing resistance between $1,980 and $2,000. Rain also reported that 30-day realized volatility rose from 39.6 to 62.6 in one day, showing how quickly the earlier compression ended.

Rain said Ethereum must now prove that $2,000 can function as support. Holding well above that level would preserve the new market structure, while a deeper reversal would suggest that liquidations contributed more to the move than sustained spot demand.

US regulation adds to Ethereum’s market catalyst

The rally also followed the SEC’s Regulation Crypto Assets proposal, published on Aug. 18. The proposed framework would introduce tailored registration exemptions for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets, including fundraising exemptions of up to $75 million annually.

The proposal has not become law and does not change Ethereum’s regulatory status immediately. However, the SEC said it aims to give crypto issuers clearer pathways under federal securities laws, adding to the improved regulatory backdrop for US investors.

Ethereum’s next move now depends on whether ETF demand and spot buying can absorb profit-taking near $2,450. A confirmed breakout would bring $2,500 into focus, while rejection could produce a cooling period toward $2,375 or $2,300 as the overbought daily RSI resets.

Tether’s planned Bitcoin mining expansion in Uruguay has collapsed after an electricity supply dispute with state utility UTE left two facilities without enough power, ending a project estimated to have cost around $120 million.

Reuters has reported that Tether abandoned two mining sites in Uruguay’s Florida department after disagreements over electricity allocations disrupted operations and eventually led its local entity, Microfin, to terminate contracts with UTE.

The project had been presented in 2023 as Tether’s first major Bitcoin mining venture in South America, with Uruguay serving as a testing ground before potential expansion into Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina. A former contractor told Reuters that Tether spent roughly $60 million on each of the two sites.

Tether did not disclose an investment figure when it announced the Uruguay operation in May 2023, describing the country as the “perfect platform” because of its renewable energy supply and reliable electricity grid.

By late 2025, however, crypto.news reported that the company had informed Uruguay’s labor authorities that it would cease local operations and had laid off 30 of its 38 employees. More than $100 million had already been spent at the time, while another $50 million had been earmarked for infrastructure that was expected to pass to UTE and Uruguay’s National Interconnected System.

Tether Bitcoin mining plans ran into an electricity supply dispute

At the core of the failed project was a disagreement over how much power Microfin could draw from UTE, according to two former Tether contractors and a source at the state utility cited by Reuters.

Tether understood a provision in its electricity contract as setting a minimum power allocation that could later be increased, one former contractor said. UTE interpreted the same amount as the maximum level available under the agreement.

As demand at the mining facilities increased, the difference became critical. One former contractor told Reuters that the sites sometimes lacked enough electricity to operate for days at a time.

UTE sources also said the dispute concerned the electricity allocation available to Microfin, which operated locally on Tether’s behalf.

An internal UTE briefing reviewed by Reuters showed that the disagreement was already underway by November 2024. Tether and Microfin did not respond to the news agency’s requests for comment about the contract.

Political changes later complicated negotiations, according to people familiar with the discussions. Uruguay’s new left-leaning government took office in March 2025 and appointed new directors at UTE, after which the utility adopted a firmer position on renegotiating the electricity agreement, one former contractor told Reuters.

Two months later, Microfin stopped paying electricity bills. The company informed UTE in June 2025 that it intended to terminate its contracts, according to the utility’s internal briefing.

The two sides still attempted to preserve the project. UTE’s board approved a memorandum of understanding and revised contract documents, but Tether representatives did not attend the scheduled signing, minutes included in the briefing showed.

With the agreement unsigned and bills outstanding, UTE disconnected electricity to the facilities on July 25. Earlier reporting put the unpaid balance connected to the two sites at roughly $5 million.

Microfin eventually settled the outstanding debt in December, UTE told Reuters.

Uruguay was intended as the first step into South America

Tether had initially viewed Uruguay as an entry point for a much larger regional mining operation, according to a former contractor who worked with the company.

The country offered political stability, established infrastructure and an electricity system powered heavily by renewable sources, while the Florida facilities allowed the company to test its mining model before committing more capital elsewhere.

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and chairman Giancarlo Devasini have also been frequent visitors to the coastal resort of Punta del Este, industry sources told Reuters. The city has attracted wealthy foreign residents and technology investors, including billionaire Peter Thiel, who is building a reported $10 million residential compound nearby.

Early operations at Tether’s facilities generated revenue and were initially well managed, according to two former contractors. A February 2024 company video showed rows of mining buildings surrounded by farmland and wind turbines, with internal roads carrying crypto-themed names including “Memepool Avenue” and “Halving Street.”

The Uruguay exit has not ended Tether’s mining activity elsewhere in the region. In July 2025, the company signed a mining agreement with Latin American agricultural producer Adecoagro to use renewable electricity for Bitcoin mining in Brazil.

Adecoagro had more than 230 megawatts of renewable generation capacity at the time and planned to use mining to monetize surplus electricity. Its CEO Mariano Bosch said the arrangement could help secure pricing for energy normally sold on the spot market while giving the company exposure to Bitcoin.

Ardoino said at the time that the Brazil project formed part of Tether’s commitment to renewable-powered mining.

Tether keeps investing in Bitcoin mining infrastructure

Mining remains part of Tether’s investment strategy despite the Uruguay withdrawal.

Ardoino said at an industry conference last year that the company had invested more than $2 billion in energy production and Bitcoin mining, according to Reuters.

Tether has also put capital into mining-related companies. In June, it sold 627,000 shares in Bitdeer for about $12.7 million but retained a 19.7% stake in the Bitcoin mining and AI infrastructure firm. The shares were sold at roughly $20 each.

Its involvement now extends to the software used to run mining operations. Tether released MiningOS as open-source software in February 2026, giving operators a system designed to manage installations ranging from small home setups to large industrial sites.

The company followed that release with an open-source Mining Development Kit in April, providing developers with tools for controlling and automating mining hardware through a common software framework.

Those investments are funded partly through profits generated by Tether’s stablecoin business. The company controls about $183 billion worth of stablecoins, Reuters reported, while assets backing its tokens have made it one of the world’s largest holders of U.S. government debt.

Tether reported $1.04 billion in net profit for the first quarter of 2026, with total assets of $191.77 billion and liabilities of $183.54 billion, according to its quarterly attestation. Its exposure to U.S. Treasuries stood at about $141 billion.

Profits from the stablecoin operation have also been deployed into data centers, video platform Rumble, brain-computer interface businesses and Italy’s Juventus football club, Reuters reported.

Bitcoin mining economics have pushed operators toward AI

The Uruguay shutdown has occurred during a difficult period for Bitcoin miners, whose revenue was hit by the April 2024 halving and later pressure on Bitcoin prices.

The halving cut the block subsidy paid to miners in half, forcing operators to rely on more efficient machines, cheaper electricity, or alternative uses for their power and data center infrastructure.

By mid-2026, hashprice, a measure of miner revenue generated per unit of computing power, had fallen into the high-$20 range per petahash per day, while older machines faced estimated breakeven levels of about $35, according to research on miner finances published in July. Public mining companies sold more than 32,000 BTC during the first quarter of 2026 as financial pressure increased.

Some operators have increasingly allocated power and facilities to artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. A June analysis found that public Bitcoin miners had secured more than $70 billion in AI and HPC contracts, while a tracked basket of mining shares had risen more than 50% in 2026 despite Bitcoin falling about 17% over the measured period.

Tanay Ved, senior research analyst at Talos, told Reuters that miners have responded to tighter economics by buying more efficient hardware, finding cheaper sources of electricity or redirecting computing infrastructure toward AI and high-performance workloads.

Mining specialist Nicolas Ribeiro said Uruguay’s reliable grid and internet connectivity could make the country better suited to AI data centers, while relatively expensive electricity weakens the economics of Bitcoin mining.

“Uruguay isn’t viable for mining — that’s the reality,” Ribeiro said.

Coinkite released a new security upgrade to strengthen seed phrase generation by requiring user-supplied entropy mixed with improved device randomness.

Coinkite announced firmware 5.6.1 for Coldcard Mk4 and Mk5 devices and 1.5.1Q for the Coldcard Q in a Thursday blog post.

The release requires newly generated seeds to include user-supplied entropy through at least 65 keypresses with unpredictable timing, 50 rolls of a six-sided die or 128 coin flips. That input is combined with randomness from multiple device sources, including its secure elements and hardware random-number generator (RNG).

The combined randomness is used to create the wallet’s seed phrase and is intended to keep its private keys unpredictable even if one of the device’s entropy sources fails.

Coinkite told users to upgrade immediately, emphasizing that existing seed phrases remain vulnerable even after upgrading and must be replaced with new seeds before migrating funds. 

Confirmed losses from the Coldcard exploit reached 1,778 Bitcoin (BTC), worth about $112 million, according to an Aug. 14 report by Galaxy Research. This makes the Coldcard hack the third-largest cryptocurrency exploit of 2026, according to data aggregated by DefiLlama.

Coldcard adds transaction and USB safeguards

The company’s July 31 firmware update had already fixed the seed-generation failure for newly created wallets. Thursday’s release follows three weeks of broader security review and also adds safeguards around USB data handling, transaction signing and hardware randomness.

Coinkite said the update addresses a theoretical attack involving a compromised computer USB port by re-verifying transactions immediately before signing. The firmware also introduces additional hardware RNG checks and a boot-time test designed to verify that the wallet is using its intended hardware path.

Related: Cybersecurity firm unveils crypto phishing campaign targeting 885,000 phone numbers

Other changes restrict USB downloads to the device’s most recent output and require an encrypted session, while certain Bitcoin signature hash modes that allow transaction outputs to remain modifiable are now blocked by default.

Coinspect launches weak-seed detection tool

Other companies are also launching software to identify wallets potentially exposed by weak seed generation.

Blockchain security company Coinspect revealed Unlukey, a free public tool for identifying wallet addresses generated from weak seed phrases. The first iteration of the tool aims to reproduce known weak seed generation and check whether public addresses belong to the affected dataset, Coinspect said in a Friday X post.

Weak seed phrase generation was one of the main vulnerabilities that led to the Coldcard exploit. TRM Labs said that a firmware bug from March 2021 weakened seed randomness on some Coldcard wallets, reducing key strength from 128 bits to 40 bits and making them “brute-forceable without physical access.” 

Magazine: Inside the ‘fake police raid’ that forced a $1M Bitcoin transfer

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said on Aug. 20 that the company is aggressively adopting artificial intelligence as it pursues further revenue and workforce growth.

Speaking at the SALT Wyoming Blockchain Symposium, Garlinghouse described AI as an “enabler and an accelerant” for companies that already have growing businesses and customer demand.

“AI, if you are in a business that has opportunity to grow and you’re serving customers and have compelling solutions, AI just lets you do that better and faster and stronger,” Garlinghouse said during the recorded interview.

He added that Ripple has approximately 1,500 employees worldwide and 150 open positions. Garlinghouse said the company intends to keep expanding because its business is growing.

Ripple sees AI as an expansion tool

Garlinghouse rejected the argument that AI is necessarily responsible for large corporate layoffs. He suggested that some companies may be using the technology to justify workforce reductions that were already needed.

“When I see companies announce big layoffs and they say, ‘Oh, well, AI X, Y, and Z,’ that to me says, ‘Well, they were bloated before and they’re using this as an excuse,’” he said.

His comments represent an opinion about recent layoffs rather than evidence about individual companies. Businesses have attributed workforce reductions to several factors, including automation, restructuring, operating costs and changes in customer demand.

Ripple’s public careers portal displayed 94 available positions when reviewed. The difference from Garlinghouse’s figure may reflect roles that have not been posted publicly, positions under recruitment through other channels or changes since the conference appearance.

Some listings directly connect Ripple’s engineering strategy with AI. One senior engineering role calls for an “AI native operation” using agentic development methods to expand the company’s payout network without relying entirely on traditional headcount growth.

Institutional expansion supports Ripple’s growth claim

Garlinghouse said Ripple expects a record year and will “more than double revenue year on year.” Ripple is privately held and does not publish the audited quarterly financial statements required of public companies. The revenue projection therefore remains company guidance.

The company has expanded beyond its original cross border payments business through acquisitions and new institutional services. Ripple completed its $1.25 billion purchase of Hidden Road in October 2025 and renamed the business Ripple Prime.

As previously reported, the acquisition expanded Ripple into global prime brokerage services covering digital assets and traditional markets. Ripple says the division clears more than $3 trillion annually for over 300 institutional customers.

Ripple previously said the prime brokerage business had tripled in size between the acquisition announcement and its completion. That figure is a company supplied measure and has not been independently audited through public financial filings.

The company has also expanded into corporate treasury management. In related coverage, Ripple introduced an enterprise platform for managing digital assets and liquidity following its acquisition of treasury software provider GTreasury.

Ripple’s AI strategy targets financial infrastructure

Garlinghouse connected the company’s outlook with its longstanding focus on financial infrastructure. Ripple sells payment, custody, stablecoin, prime brokerage and treasury services to institutions.

“More and more people are realizing that the infrastructure side, the institutional side is where it’s at,” he said. He described Ripple’s role as connecting traditional finance with decentralized financial infrastructure.

Ripple President Monica Long made a similar case in the company’s 2026 predictions. She said AI models could work alongside blockchains to automate liquidity management, margin calls and portfolio rebalancing.

The strategy does not mean Ripple will replace employees with autonomous systems. Its current position is that AI can increase the output of existing teams while helping the company serve more customers and enter additional markets.

The next measurable tests will be Ripple’s hiring activity and whether it reaches Garlinghouse’s revenue target. Any public listing could eventually provide independently audited financial information, but the company has not announced a confirmed timetable for an initial public offering.

Ripple’s commercial growth also should not be treated as automatic growth for XRP. Ripple is a private company, while XRP is a separate digital asset. As crypto.news previously explained, many Ripple services can grow without creating direct demand for XRP.