Bitcoin BTC$63,501.46 steadied above $63,000 on Monday, clawing back a fraction of last week’s losses with a 0.8% gain since midnight UTC.

Without an obvious catalyst, the largest cryptocurrency appears to be tracking U.S. equities. Nasdaq 100 index futures are up 0.5% to their highest point since July 2.

Any positive reading will need to take into account last week’s net $390 million outflow from spot exchange-traded funds, including the first three-day stretch since the end of July. That was the largest weekly withdrawal from U.S. spot bitcoin products in six weeks.

Ether ETH$1,900.99 ETFs flows were limited, and solana (SOL) ETFs bucked the trend with their strongest weekly inflows since mid-May.

The bigger picture is the Clarity Act. Galaxy Research’s head of research, Alex Thorn, cut his odds of the landmark crypto bill becoming law in 2026 to roughly 10% on Aug. 14, joining prediction markets that now put the probability at around 17%. A cloture vote is scheduled for Sept. 15 when the Senate returns from recess, although market observers are expecting another delay.

Derivatives positioning

• Taker ratio stays balanced: the 24-hour long-short volume ratio for takers hangs in balance again, extending Friday’s trend. Takers are entities that pull liquidity from the order book by trading at available prices.
• Thin liquidity raises swing risk: BTC’s notional open interest, at $48 billion, is now nearly double its 24-hour trading volume. XRP’s market shows a similar pattern. That gap means any mass liquidation event could run into thin liquidity, raising the odds of wild price swings.
• BTC OI pulls back, XRP holds firm: in contract terms, BTC’s open interest (OI) has pulled back to 750,000 BTC from Friday’s 760,000 BTC. That’s been a pattern since April, with spikes above 750,000 BTC often proving short-lived. XRP futures show the opposite dynamic, with OI holding steady at 10-month highs. Positioning in ETH and SOL remains relatively light in comparison.
• CC shows bearish buildup: Canton Network’s CC token has dropped over 1.5% in 24 hours, making it one of the biggest losers among the top 100 coins by market value. OI in futures tied to the token has risen more than 5% over the same period. That combination points to shorts, or bearish bets, being built up. Negative annualized perpetual funding rates and a negative OI-adjusted 24-hour cumulative volume delta (CVD) both support that read, indicating bears are leading the market.
• ZEC bucks the trend: Privacy-focused ZEC is also an OI gainer. In this case, a positive 24-hour CVD, is a sign bulls are being more aggressive, taking longs via market orders rather than passive limit orders. ZEC’s funding rate is also positive at +10%, indicating a growing bias toward bullish bets.
• Volatility and fear stay low: Bitcoin and ether’s 30-day implied volatility indexes remain pinned near year-to-date lows, suggesting fear levels and demand for options-based insurance against price swings are both muted. Wall Street’s VIX tells a similar story, sitting at its lowest level since January.
• Options positioning leans bullish near-term: On Deribit, the skew for BTC and ETH shows a bid for calls, or bullish bets, at the front end of the curve. The implied volatility term structure shows no signs of short-term stress either, despite Wednesday’s scheduled release of the Fed minutes.
• Volume rankings show a split: 24-hour volume rankings show a mixed profile, with both BTC calls and puts among the top five most-traded instruments. The same holds for ether.

Token talk

• Pump.fun PUMP$0.002888 is one of the standout performers on Monday, adding 7.80% since midnight UTC with daily trading volume rising 55% to $90 million.
• ZEC has gained 4.70% since midnight at $508, extending a notable stretch for privacy coins following XMR’s strong run last week.
• MORPHO advanced by 5% at $2.07, reversing some of Friday’s weakness and leading the DeFi names higher.
• HYPE rose 3.53% to $59.08, continuing its steady grind and now up around 2% on the week.
• FET is one of the weakest altcoins on Monday, down 1.56% since midnight at $0.1196, giving back some of last week’s gains as AI-adjacent tokens lose momentum.
• CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator is at 46/100, recovering from the Aug. 7 low of 36/100 as optimism slowly returns to the altcoin sector. CoinMarketCap’s Fear and Greed index sits at 38/100, a “fear” reading.

How the theft happened

For years, stablecoins were treated mainly as a safe harbor inside the volatile crypto market—a way to move between trades without converting back to traditional currency.

That perception is changing.

Stablecoins are increasingly becoming the financial infrastructure itself, creating a new category of companies that can be described as stablecoin-native businesses. These businesses are not simply accepting stablecoins as a payment option. They are building their operations, treasury management, payments, payroll, lending, and global settlement systems around programmable digital dollars.

From Crypto Tool to Business Infrastructure

Traditional businesses depend on banks for many essential financial functions: sending money internationally, receiving payments, managing treasury assets, processing payroll, and settling transactions.

Stablecoins can potentially compress many of these functions into programmable, internet-native infrastructure.

A business can receive a dollar-denominated stablecoin, move it across borders, interact with decentralized protocols, or settle with another company without necessarily relying on the same banking rails used by traditional finance.

This creates an important shift:

Stablecoins are moving from being products used by businesses to infrastructure businesses can be built on.

The New Stablecoin-Native Business Model

Imagine a global software company with customers in ten countries.

Instead of maintaining multiple banking relationships and waiting days for certain international settlements, it could use stablecoins for selected parts of its financial operations.

Revenue could arrive in stablecoins. Contractors could be paid through stablecoin rails. Treasury funds could potentially earn yield through regulated or decentralized financial products. Suppliers could receive near-real-time settlement.

The company doesn’t need to become a crypto company.

It simply needs to recognize that money itself is becoming programmable.

This opens the door to businesses specializing in:

• Stablecoin payment processing
• Cross-border payroll
• Global merchant settlement
• Stablecoin treasury management
• On-chain credit
• Automated financial operations
• Stablecoin-based remittances
• Business-to-business settlement
• Stablecoin lending markets
• Compliance and transaction monitoring

The opportunity may be much larger than simply building another payment app.

Why Businesses Are Paying Attention

One of the biggest advantages of stablecoins is their ability to operate on internet-native networks.

Traditional financial systems were designed around institutions, banking hours, correspondent relationships, and geographic boundaries.

Blockchain networks operate differently.

Transactions can be initiated globally and settled on-chain, potentially reducing friction between businesses operating in different jurisdictions.

For companies dealing with international customers and suppliers, this could create a meaningful competitive advantage.

The most interesting use case may therefore not be consumer crypto speculation.

It may be boring business infrastructure.

And boring infrastructure can become extremely valuable when it processes enormous amounts of economic activity.

Stablecoins Could Reshape Corporate Treasury

Treasury management is another area where stablecoin-native businesses could emerge.

Companies constantly manage cash balances, working capital, liquidity, and international payments.

Tokenized dollars could provide businesses with new ways to move and allocate capital while interacting with programmable financial infrastructure.

A future treasury system could automatically route funds according to predefined rules:

Revenue → Operating Wallet → Payroll → Supplier Payments → Reserve → Investment

Smart contracts could potentially automate portions of this process.

That changes the role of treasury from simply managing money to programming capital flows.

The Rise of Stablecoin APIs

Another major development could be the emergence of stablecoin infrastructure companies that operate behind the scenes.

Businesses may not want to understand wallets, private keys, gas fees, blockchains, or smart contracts.

They simply want an API.

The winning infrastructure providers could offer businesses simple tools for:

Deposit → Convert → Send → Receive → Reconcile → Report

Underneath the interface, blockchain networks handle settlement.

This could make stablecoins increasingly invisible to end users.

And ironically, that may be one of the strongest indicators of adoption.

The technology doesn’t need to be visible to become important.

Regulation Will Shape the Market

Stablecoin adoption will not happen in a regulatory vacuum.

Businesses need clarity around reserves, redemption, taxation, accounting, custody, consumer protection, and compliance.

This means the next generation of stablecoin companies will likely need to combine crypto-native technology with traditional financial discipline.

Trust will become just as important as transaction speed.

Businesses will ask:

• Who backs the stablecoin?
• How can it be redeemed?
• Where are reserves held?
• What happens during market stress?
• Which jurisdictions are supported?
• How are transactions monitored?
• Who controls the infrastructure?

The winners may not necessarily be the projects with the most sophisticated technology.

They may be the companies that can make blockchain-based money feel as reliable as traditional financial infrastructure.

Stablecoin-Native Doesn’t Mean Crypto-Only

Perhaps the most important distinction is this:

A stablecoin-native company doesn’t necessarily need to sell crypto products.

It could be a logistics company, payroll provider, SaaS platform, marketplace, remittance business, fintech, or global commerce platform.

The common factor is that stablecoins become part of the company’s underlying financial architecture.

That makes the concept much bigger than DeFi.

It connects DeFi, fintech, payments, commerce, and global finance.

What Comes Next?

The first wave of stablecoin adoption focused heavily on trading and crypto liquidity.

The next wave could focus on economic activity outside crypto markets.

Businesses could begin using stablecoins because they offer practical advantages—not because they want exposure to digital assets.

That distinction matters.

When technology becomes useful enough that people stop caring about the technology itself, adoption can accelerate dramatically.

Stablecoins may be heading toward that point.

The future may not be a world where every company proudly advertises that it is “crypto-native.”

Instead, we could see something more subtle:

Businesses simply operating on stablecoin rails because they are cheaper, faster, programmable, and global.

The rise of stablecoin-native businesses, therefore, represents more than just another crypto trend.

It could mark the beginning of a new financial architecture where money becomes software—and businesses learn to build directly on top of it.

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Binance cofounder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said Trust Wallet could make its existing Ignore coins feature easier to access after unsolicited meme tokens complicated management of his public wallet.

Zhao acknowledged on Aug. 17 that he had misjudged how useful the control could be. He said members of the Trust Wallet team told him that users can already ignore unwanted tokens, although reaching the option requires five steps.

No formal Trust Wallet announcement followed his post. The company has not confirmed a product update, specified which application versions may change or published a release date.

CZ reverses his view on hiding unwanted coins

Zhao initially doubted that most wallet users needed a control for hiding random tokens. He reconsidered after people explained that unsolicited assets regularly appear in public cryptocurrency addresses.

“I misjudged that. A few people mentioned it is a useful feature,” Zhao wrote.

He said the Trust Wallet team had seen the discussion and informed him about the existing Ignore coins option. Zhao then offered a personal expectation rather than a confirmed development plan.

“I assume they will make some updates to this feature soon,” Zhao said. Trust Wallet has not publicly confirmed that assumption.

Making the control easier to find could help users organize wallets filled with spam, dust or unsupported assets. It would not remove the tokens from the blockchain or prevent other people from sending more assets to the same address.

Trust Wallet’s glossary advises users not to move or spend unknown dust. It also recommends using tools that hide or ignore unrecognized small balances.

Trust Wallet cannot remove tokens from a blockchain

Public blockchain addresses can receive compatible tokens without approval from the address owner. A sender only needs the destination address and enough funds to pay the network fee.

Wallet software acts as an interface for reading and displaying blockchain records. It can hide unwanted balances from its portfolio screen, but it cannot reverse a valid transfer or erase the token from the underlying network.

Ignoring a token is also different from burning it. A burn requires sending an asset to an address designed to place it outside normal circulation. Hiding an asset changes only how the wallet application displays it.

The same distinction applies to privacy. Concealing an unwanted balance in Trust Wallet does not make the transfer private. Blockchain explorers can still display the sending address, receiving address, token contract and transaction amount.

Trust Wallet has documented the risks of fraudulent airdrops and copycat tokens in its security guidance. The company warns users against opening links promoted by unknown tokens or approving suspicious transactions.

Meme coin spam pushed CZ to retire his wallet

Zhao’s comments followed his decision to stop using a closely watched public wallet. Community members had repeatedly sent meme coins and other BNB Chain tokens to the address, sometimes hoping that visibility in his wallet would attract attention.

As crypto.news previously reported, Zhao moved roughly $965,000 to Giggle Academy before retiring the address. Onchain trackers reported transfers of approximately 1,440 BNB and 182,620 币安人生 tokens to the education project.

Zhao said it was almost impossible to clean out the wallet because anyone could continue sending new tokens. He described the retired address as effectively serving as a burn address, although it is not a protocol defined burn address.

The private key holder could technically use the address again unless access has been destroyed or permanently surrendered. Zhao has said he will no longer use it, but blockchain records cannot verify a personal promise about future activity.

The episode also shows how public wallets linked to prominent people can become promotional tools. A token appearing in a known address does not prove that the address owner purchased, approved or endorsed it.

Zhao previously warned users not to send tokens to him and suggested that projects burn their tokens directly instead. Community members nevertheless continued monitoring the address and speculating about whether he might test selected meme coins.

Hiding tokens does not remove security risks

Unsolicited tokens are not automatically malicious. Some can result from legitimate airdrops, marketing campaigns or ordinary transfers. Others may contain links or names intended to direct users toward fraudulent websites.

The main risk often begins when a user interacts with an unknown contract, visits a website promoted through a token or grants spending approval to a decentralized application. Simply receiving a token does not give its sender control of the wallet.

Trust Wallet separately allows users to review and revoke token approvals. Its official instructions explain that approvals authorize applications to access tokens, while the Ignore coins control concerns portfolio display.

Users should also distinguish unsolicited tokens from address poisoning. In related coverage, a crypto user lost 100,000 USDT after copying a lookalike wallet address that an attacker had planted in the transaction history. Hiding a token would not prevent that form of attack.

What happens next for the Ignore coins feature

Trust Wallet may move the existing control closer to its main portfolio screen or reduce the number of steps required to use it. Zhao’s comment suggests the team is aware of the feedback, but it does not confirm the design, timing or availability of any change.

A formal application update, release note or statement from Trust Wallet would provide confirmation. Until then, reports that the company has announced a new privacy measure would be inaccurate.

The confirmed development is narrower. Zhao reversed his earlier opinion, identified an existing feature that he considers difficult to reach and said he assumed Trust Wallet would update it.

Users can already hide unwanted assets through the wallet interface. Those assets remain visible onchain, and avoiding interaction with unknown tokens remains the safer approach.

Binance gave Russian authorities customer records later used to charge a Russian IT specialist with financing terrorism over donations to Ukrainian groups, according to a report by Reuters on Monday.

The exchange identified Yuri Belenkiy as the source of transfers worth more than $700, Reuters reported, citing law enforcement documents. Binance also allegedly provided his date of birth, address, phone number and passport number, alongside copies of his Russian passport and Bulgarian residency permit.

Russian authorities detained Belenkiy in September 2025 and he remains in jail awaiting trial.

Russia’s Investigative Committee alleged that Belenkiy made the payments between January 2023 and March 2024 after an appeal by exiled Kremlin critic Arkady Babchenko. The funds were intended for the Ukrainian military and a group associated with the Azov Brigade, which Moscow classifies as a terrorist organization.

Investigators reportedly received two responses from case@binanceholdings.ru after requesting Belenkiy’s transaction history. Binance’s website had directed Russian and Belarusian law enforcement agencies to that address.

Binance’s current law-enforcement guidelines say the exchange requires a valid court order, police order or warrant before providing user information in a criminal investigation.