Binance reportedly provided Russian authorities with transaction records and personal information belonging to a customer accused of financing terrorism via cryptocurrency donations to Ukrainian fundraising campaigns.

Russian investigators used information supplied by Binance as evidence against IT specialist Yuri Belenkiy, who was detained in September 2025 and is awaiting trial in Russia, according to law enforcement documents reviewed by Reuters.

Russia’s Investigative Committee alleged Belenkiy sent more than $700 in crypto between January 2023 and March 2024 to the Ukrainian military and a banned organization that Reuters identified as the group known at different times as the Azov Brigade and the Azov Regiment.

Reuters’ review found that Russian authorities asked Binance for Belenkiy’s transaction history and received information linking him to the transfers, along with his date of birth, address, phone number and passport number. The response also included copies of his Russian passport and Bulgarian residency permit.

Binance announced a full exit from Russia in September 2023, selling its local business to CommEX.

A Binance spokesperson declined to comment on specific confidential law enforcement requests or individual cases.

“Binance does not make or enforce the laws of any jurisdiction, determine charges, or decide how any government uses information in legal proceedings. Like other global financial institutions, we cooperate with lawful information requests from law enforcement globally, subject to applicable legal, privacy and regulatory requirements,” the spokesperson told Cointelegraph.

Related: Binance to restrict transactions involving HTX, 10 other crypto platforms

Cointelegraph is committed to independent, transparent journalism. This news article is produced in accordance with Cointelegraph’s Editorial Policy and aims to provide accurate and timely information. Readers are encouraged to verify information independently.

Cardano price fell about 1% to $0.174 as traders weighed a two-stage Dijkstra upgrade roadmap against a bearish chart structure and nearby liquidation risks.

Cardano price action today

According to data from crypto.news, Cardano (ADA) price was trading near $0.174 at the time of writing, down about 1% over the past 24 hours. ADA remained below the $0.18 level after retreating from an Aug. 7 peak above $0.21.

The 4-hour chart shows that ADA has broken below an ascending channel that guided its recovery from approximately $0.153 in late July. Cardano price initially climbed along the channel to $0.20 before the breakout failed and sellers regained control.

ADA has since formed a series of lower highs and lower lows, bringing it back toward the area where the late-July rally began. The latest decline also left the token about 17% below its August high.

4-hour momentum remains weak. The relative strength index stood at 35.06, close to the oversold threshold of 30, while its signal line was lower at 33.32. The reading shows sellers still control the short-term trend, although ADA is approaching a zone where selling pressure may begin to slow.

Analysts at AltCryptoGems said in an Aug. 17 X post that ADA’s decline followed a bearish break in market structure. The analyst also pointed to heavy capital rotation across the altcoin market, where rallies have been short-lived as traders move funds between individual tokens.

Dijkstra Era upgrade will arrive in two phases

Intersect’s official Dijkstra rollout plan divides Cardano’s next major protocol upgrade into two stages. The first phase targets code completion in the fourth quarter of 2026 and will introduce the Dijkstra ledger era through a hard fork to protocol version 12.

Phase one is set to activate Ouroboros Linear Leios, a scaling design intended to increase the number of transactions Cardano can handle while retaining the security guarantees of its existing base protocol.

Linear Leios will use the current ranking blocks alongside supplementary endorser blocks. Those additional blocks will reference transactions and receive certification from a stake-based committee before the transactions enter the ledger.

Intersect said the approach allows Cardano to process more transactions without requiring larger base blocks or shorter slot times. Throughput would be raised gradually through protocol parameter changes after activation.

The first phase also includes nested transactions, a PlutusV4 script context, account-address improvements, and changes to Cardano’s block structure. Nested transactions will allow a transaction to contain child transactions with their own witnesses and execution conditions, giving developers more options when building on-chain applications.

Structural support for Ouroboros Peras will also ship during the first phase, but the settlement feature will not become active immediately. Intersect plans to activate Peras through a second hard fork within the Dijkstra Era, with code completion targeted for the second quarter of 2027.

Peras will add a voting layer that allows committees of stake pool operators to vote on recent chain tips. Once a tip receives enough votes, the network can treat it as settled sooner than under Cardano’s standard Ouroboros Praos process.

The Q4 2026 and Q2 2027 targets refer to estimated code-completion dates rather than confirmed mainnet launches. Each phase must pass through the Preview and Pre-production test networks before reaching Cardano’s mainnet.

Mainnet activation will also require an on-chain governance action. Delegated representatives, stake pool operators, and the Constitutional Committee must vote on the proposal before either hard fork can proceed.

Cardano price tests the $0.1706 support level

ADA’s daily chart places the price close to the 78.6% Fibonacci retracement level at $0.1706. The level is measured from the June low of $0.1385 to the May high of $0.2886 and now represents the nearest major support on the chart.

Cardano price was slightly above its 20-day simple moving average at $0.1738 at the time captured by the chart. However, ADA remained below its 50-day average at $0.1843, its 100-day average at $0.1892 and its 200-day average at $0.2260.

The position below the three longer-term averages keeps the wider trend under pressure. The Awesome Oscillator remained marginally positive at 0.0020, but its shrinking red bars showed that the momentum generated by ADA’s early-August recovery was fading.

A daily close below $0.1706 would weaken the current support structure and expose the recent liquidity area near $0.166. Continued selling could then place the June swing low at $0.1385 back in focus.

ADA would first need to recover the 50-day average near $0.1843 to ease the immediate bearish pressure. A move above that level would bring the 100-day average around $0.1892 and the 61.8% Fibonacci level at $0.1958 into view.

The $0.1958 area also sits close to the former rising channel and the price zone where ADA’s August advance began to lose momentum. A sustained recovery above it would allow traders to consider the 50% retracement at $0.2135, although the current charts do not yet show confirmation of such a reversal.

ADA liquidation map points to volatility near $0.185

CoinGlass’ one-week ADA liquidation heatmap shows several leveraged position clusters above the current price. The brightest concentration appears around $0.186 to $0.187, with another large cluster close to $0.183.

Prices can move toward areas containing large volumes of leveraged positions because forced liquidations add market orders once those levels are reached. The data does not guarantee that ADA will rebound, but it identifies $0.183–$0.187 as a potentially volatile area if buyers push the token above $0.18.

Additional liquidation bands are visible around $0.188–$0.193, increasing the potential resistance above the first cluster. Those levels broadly overlap with ADA’s 50-day and 100-day moving averages, strengthening the importance of the wider $0.184–$0.196 zone.

Liquidity below the market appears more scattered. CoinGlass shows smaller concentrations near $0.170 and toward the bottom of the displayed range at approximately $0.166. A break below $0.1706 could therefore accelerate the decline as leveraged long positions face liquidation.

For US investors trading ADA around the clock, the Dijkstra roadmap provides a longer-term network catalyst but no fixed mainnet date. Near-term direction remains tied to whether ADA holds $0.1706 and recovers the moving averages and liquidation clusters between $0.183 and $0.196.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has begun the formal process of building regulations for the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins (GENIUS) Act, launching a notice of proposed rulemaking for public comment. The move is aimed at clarifying how the new stablecoin framework will be implemented ahead of the law’s scheduled start date in January 2027.

In a notice released on Monday, Treasury said it is accepting feedback as it works toward regulatory certainty for businesses operating in the stablecoin payments market. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the department “welcomes input from stakeholders as [it works] to provide the regulatory certainty businesses need to innovate and grow in America.”

Key takeaways

• Treasury has opened a proposed-rulemaking process for GENIUS stablecoin implementation, inviting public comment before the January 2027 effective date.
• Under the GENIUS framework, payment stablecoins generally cannot be issued in the U.S. without an associated federal or state license once the law takes effect.
• The public comment window runs for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.
• Earlier GENIUS-related proposals from other regulators may still leave uncertainty for market participants, especially given reported missed internal deadlines.

Treasury starts the GENIUS rulemaking process

The GENIUS Act, signed into law last year, is designed to establish a dedicated regulatory structure for “payment stablecoins.” Treasury’s Monday notice signals the next phase: translating statutory requirements into operational rules that regulated entities can plan around.

Treasury’s timeline indicates the law’s effect is tied to the agencies finalizing their rules. Under the bill’s schedule, the stablecoin law was set to begin 120 days after agencies complete final rules, or 18 months after the act’s passage in July 2025—placing the effective date on Jan. 18, 2027. Treasury’s proposed rules are intended to feed into that schedule rather than wait for the very end of the timeline.

Once GENIUS goes into effect, Treasury said an entity generally may not “issue a payment stablecoin” in the U.S. without a related federal or state license. That restriction is central to how market participants will need to structure issuance, compliance, and oversight, and it also underscores why regulators are pushing for rules well ahead of the deadline.

Interested parties will have 60 days to submit comments after the notice is published in the Federal Register, according to Treasury’s disclosure in the proposed-rulemaking notice.

Other agencies issued related proposals in 2026

Treasury is not acting in isolation. Alongside Treasury, other U.S. financial regulators—including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and the Federal Reserve Board—have reportedly issued notices of proposed rules in 2026 related to GENIUS implementation. Earlier coverage from Cointelegraph noted that OCC proposals were also aimed at shaping the operating environment for stablecoins and addressing areas of policy debate.

However, the lead time between proposal announcements and final rules matters for businesses planning issuance pathways. The article notes that all departments reportedly missed a July 120-day deadline that would have allowed regulations to be finalized before January. That raises the possibility that GENIUS could take effect even without fully finalized guidance, which would leave some details uncertain for regulated entities and could complicate timelines for compliance readiness.

For market participants, this creates an important distinction: while the effective date is known, the practical contours of licensing and regulatory expectations may not be fully settled by then. That gap is precisely what public comment periods and subsequent rule finalization are meant to close.

GENIUS work is also being discussed with the UK

Beyond Washington, regulators are also coordinating on how stablecoin policy developments may intersect across borders. In July, the UK-US Financial Regulatory Working Group met in London to discuss cooperation between financial agencies, including implementation of the GENIUS Act.

The UK has taken its own steps toward regulating stablecoins, according to the referenced reporting. Still, crypto industry observers have argued that the UK risks falling behind the U.S. in terms of implementation momentum, especially as the U.S. continues to move toward a defined effective date and agency-by-agency rulemaking.

That difference matters for companies planning cross-border stablecoin services, since regulatory timing can affect product deployment, licensing strategy, and operational design—particularly for payment-oriented issuers that need clarity on authorization and compliance obligations.

Why the proposed rules matter before January 2027

The immediate consequence of Treasury’s proposed rulemaking is that stakeholders now have a formal channel to influence how GENIUS translates into enforceable requirements. While the precise contents of the proposed rules aren’t detailed in the excerpt, the framework’s licensing premise is already clear: payment stablecoins are generally not meant to be issued without an appropriate federal or state license once the law is active.

In practical terms, this means issuers and partners—such as payment processors and custody providers that support stablecoin networks—will likely need to map their roles to the future licensing and compliance system. If finalized rules arrive late relative to the effective date, businesses may face a planning problem: they can prepare for the direction of travel, but they may not know every operational requirement until rulemaking concludes.

With public comment open for 60 days after Federal Register publication, the next phase will test how quickly regulators can process feedback and move toward final rules. Market participants should watch for whether agencies can align their proposals into coherent, implementable guidance before the January 2027 milestone.

As Treasury and other regulators work through comments and finalization, the key uncertainty for stablecoin issuers is timing: whether the remaining rule details will be finalized with enough lead time for licensing and operational compliance. The public comment window will offer early signals about the issues regulators prioritize and the expectations that will shape GENIUS implementation.

Bitcoin (BTC) is starting the new week at around $63,000, but bear-market history continues to repeat with weekly close below a key long-term trend line.

Key points:

• Bitcoin has been trading in a range between $57,700 and $67,300, but last week’s close came with a drop below the key 200-week moving average at $64,216.
• Markets are pricing in near-70% odds of a hold by the Federal Reserve in September, as July meeting minutes are due this week.
• Japan Q2 GDP figures fall short of expectations at 1.1% as analysis warns of “global tightening” that could impact Bitcoin and risk assets. 

Bitcoin sees weekly close below 200-week moving average

Bitcoin price action enjoyed a modest rebound after Sunday’s weekly close, seeing local highs of $63,655 on Bitstamp.

BTC/USD one-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Data from TradingView shows BTC/USD continuing to tread water as the week begins, failing to challenge either side of a narrow trading range.

Analyst Benjamin Cowen, however, drew attention to the fact that BTC/USD is now back below its 200-week simple moving average (SMA). As Cointelegraph reported, this moving average was a defining feature in the 2022 bear market, when it turned resistance in August before BTC entered its long-term bottoming phase.

“What is interesting is how in both summer 2022/2026, Bitcoin capitulated below the 200W SMA, then bounced, then gave it up in mid-August,” he wrote in a post on X.

BTC/USD one-week chart with 200 SMA. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Commenting, trader and analyst Rekt Capital added that price had failed to reach his own weekly-close target of $63,220, thus positioning for further downside in future.

“A rejection from $63,220 would fully confirm the breakdown and send price lower within the current ~$58,000-$66,000 Range (blue-blue)” he told X followers alongside an explanatory chart.

BTC/USD one-week chart. Source: Rekt Capital on X.com

Fed minutes due amid policy dissent

Friday sees the release of preliminary Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) data for the manufacturing and services sectors. The data has recently been in an uptrend diverging from relatively weak employment figures, which have seen several months of downward revisions. 

Last week’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Producer Price Index (PPI) releases, meanwhile, painted a softer-than-expected picture of US inflation trends.  This sparked a rethink on future interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. 

The latest data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool shows near-70% odds that the Fed will hold rates at their current 3.50-3.75% range, compared with 42% odds a month ago.

Fed target-rate probability comparison for September FOMC meeting (screenshot). Source: CME Group

“A pair of reports showing moderating inflation is helping keep the outlook for monetary policy from turning too hawkish,” trading resource Mosaic Asset Company summarized in analysis released on Sunday.

Mosaic noted that while CPI came in at 3.4% year-on-year, this was still far above the Fed’s 2% target — a goal that chair Kevin Warsh continues to state will be achieved. On Wednesday, the Fed will publish the minutes of its July meeting.  Rate hikes were paused in the prior meeting with the largest split among officials over the move since 1970.

Last week, Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank president Beth Hammack, who was one of three dissenting voices calling for a 0.25% rate hike in July, questioned whether public patience would tolerate it if the return to 2% rates took several years.

“Maybe we’d get there, but if it takes another three to four years to get there, is that OK? Is that enough?” she said at an event with the Dayton Area Chamber of Commerce in Kettering, Ohio, quoted by Bloomberg.

Japan on the radar as GDP disappoints

Japan’s central bank is on the radar for risk-asset traders this week after Q2 GDP figures significantly missed expectations. Quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year GDP increased 0.3% and 1.1%, respectively — below the anticipated 0.5% and 2.0%.

The timing of the print comes as markets see the Bank of Japan (BoJ) hiking rates from current 1.0% levels in September amid surging bond yields and continued weakening in the yen. Previously, Cointelegraph reported on a rare joint intervention in yen currency markets by Japan and the US after JPY/USD weakened to new 40-year lows.

BoJ interest-rate probabilities (screenshot). Source: RateProbability

The GDP print, meanwhile, included the first drop in private consumption in eight quarters, signaling that existing stimulus measures were failing to prop up consumer confidence.

“The boost to consumption from policy measures is already fading, and inflation will increase in H2 as firms will pass on increased costs, deteriorating consumers’ purchasing power,” Norihiro Yamaguchi, lead Japan economist at Oxford Economics, told CNBC.

The yen avoided major volatility on the back of the GDP data, lingering near 159 per dollar on Monday.

USD/JPY four-hour chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Responding to the aftermath, Axel Adler Jr., a contributor to onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant, noted potential implications for risk assets to come. Japan’s 10-year bond yield hit 2.93% on Monday, its highest levels since 1996.

“For now, this is not a signal to sell risk assets. But the market is approaching an important point: JGB > 3% + further BOJ rate hikes + a stronger yen + rising US Treasury yields,” he wrote in an X post. 

“If these factors align, Japan’s rate normalization could turn into a global tightening of financial conditions and hit stocks and Bitcoin.”

Japan 10-year bond yields one-day chart. Source: Cointelegraph/TradingView

Bitcoin forgotten as consumer sentiment lows contrast with stocks gains

Rising stocks paired with record-low consumer sentiment are flashing a new warning sign for Bitcoin, which is increasingly being overlooked.

In the latest edition of its regular newsletter, The Week Onchain, crypto analytics platform Glassnode revealed a striking divergence between Bitcoin and equities in terms of sentiment.

“Consumer Confidence remains among the weakest readings of the past decade even after two consecutive improvements, while the US Stock Market Index set a fresh all-time high on August 7 and holds just beneath it,” it summarized.

The softer US inflation prints helped send the S&P 500 to all-time highs of 7,816 on Thursday. At the same time, the consumer sentiment survey by the University of Michigan is expected to drop 7.6% in August.

“Weak sentiment next to record prices looks like a contradiction until the driver is named: households that expect living costs to rise and the economy to soften are moving out of cash and into assets. The equity market, carried above all by the AI trade, is where that capital lands,” Glassnode commented.

US consumer sentiment data. Source: University of Michigan

Bitcoin continues to be left out of this capital rotation. A sign of change, Glassnode argued, would be a sustained rebound in institutional inflows to the US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Last week, these saw net outflows of $267.2 million, per data from UK-based investment company Farside Investors. Just one out of five trading days finished with net inflows, totaling a mere $7.8 million.

US spot Bitcoin ETF netflows (screenshot). Source: Farside Investors

Exchange BTC reserves grow with whale inflows in focus

Bitcoin supply dynamics are the latest troubling feature for its price trajectory, CryptoQuant analysis reports.

Related: Here’s what happened in crypto today

Whales have started to dominate exchange inflows, exacerbating an existing absence of retail interest and causing exchange BTC reserves to reverse higher. Binance’s whale ratio reached 0.71 on Aug. 10, its highest since early March. 

“Exchange deposits do not necessarily mean immediate selling, but they increase the amount of BTC available for trading or hedging,” CryptoQuant commented.

Binance exchange whale ratio. Source: CryptoQuant

Binance’s BTC reserves totaled 674,332 BTC on Sunday, up 2.57% month-to-date and at their highest since November 2025.

“The long-running trend of BTC leaving exchanges may therefore be weakening,” CryptoQuant continued.

Binance BTC reserves. Source: CryptoQuant

As Cointelegraph reported, exchange activity has been driven by derivatives markets as BTC/USD trades in a tight range since early June. On Binance, futures trading volume was eight times that of spot markets in early August.