institution

BitGo announced that it has acquired NYDIG's institutional trading business and related assets, incorporating derivatives, structured products, financing, and capital market capabilities into its institutional platform. Approximately 30 NYDIG employees will join BitGo, and NYDIG's institutional trading client relationships will also transfer to BitGo along with the business.BitGo will integrate the related business with its custody, trading, settlement, and wallet infrastructure. NYDIG will focus its resources on power generation, Bitcoin mining, and high-performance computing data center operations. NYDIG stated that its computing power infrastructure development reserves currently exceed 3 gigawatts, with more than 1 gigawatt expected to be delivery-ready by 2027 and 2028.

According to CoinDesk, the U.S. clearing and custody institution RQD Clearing announced the completion of a $74 million financing round, led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, a technology investment division of Bain Capital, with participation from ABN AMRO Clearing Bank and Nyca Partners. This round of financing will be used to expand operations in North America, Asia, and the Middle East, and to enhance infrastructure development for digital asset custody and asset tokenization.RQD primarily provides post-trade clearing and custody services for broker-dealers, investment advisors, and overseas financial institutions in the U.S. market, responsible for key processes such as securities and funds settlement, and risk management. This year, the company has processed approximately 515 million stock trades, involving nearly $2 trillion, accounting for about 2.4% of the National Market System (NMS) stock trading volume in the U.S.As Wall Street institutions accelerate their exploration of on-chain finance, traditional market infrastructure is becoming an important direction for the competition of tokenized assets. RQD has previously collaborated with Blue Ocean Technologies to advance the clearing and settlement infrastructure for tokenized U.S. stocks and has aligned with the tokenized securities framework of the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC).

CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju stated that the peak of this bull market cycle is likely to be driven by institutional funds and ETFs outside of the United States. Currently, South Korea has not yet launched a spot Bitcoin ETF, retail investors cannot purchase overseas related ETFs, and companies are even unable to open trading platform accounts to buy BTC.Ki Young Ju believes that the market was primarily driven by the adoption of Bitcoin in the United States, but the next phase will shift towards global institutionalization, accompanied by deeper stablecoin liquidity and RWA infrastructure. More institutions will hold BTC as a strategic asset, and several countries that have not yet launched ETFs will gradually improve related investment channels. The peak of this cycle may occur when a banker from a local bank in South Korea recommends a spot Bitcoin ETF to an elderly woman, suggesting it for savings.

SK Group plans to sell a 49% stake in its Ulsan artificial intelligence data center in South Korea to several private equity firms. SK Telecom and SK Broadband intend to approve the transaction at the board meeting on August 27.KKR will acquire a 29% stake, while a consortium formed by IMM Investment and Stonebridge Capital will acquire a 20% stake. The transaction is valued at approximately 3 trillion won, which includes about 1.2 trillion won in capital increase.

According to Bitcoin.com, Strategy (MSTR) Executive Chairman Michael Saylor proposed the concept of "Bitcoin Reform" in a published article, advocating that Bitcoin should break free from the dogmatic understanding of early concepts such as Satoshi Nakamoto, the white paper, and "must self-custody," and further integrate into banks, exchanges, enterprises, securities markets, and government systems.Saylor stated that self-custody remains an important right for holders to freely exit the intermediary system, but it should not be a mandatory obligation for everyone; users can also evaluate institutional services based on dimensions such as custodial isolation, collateral, audits, insurance, and withdrawal rights. He believes that Bitcoin has gradually evolved from peer-to-peer electronic cash and "digital gold" into "digital capital" that can support credit, equity, currency, and machine economies.

According to the latest data from Counterpoint Research, the Apple iPhone 17 is the best-selling smartphone globally in the second quarter of 2026, accounting for 6% of the total global smartphone shipments; the iPhone 17 Pro Max and iPhone 17 Pro rank second and third on the list. Apple and Samsung each occupy five positions in the global best-selling smartphone TOP10 list; the top ten models together account for 26% of the total global smartphone sales, an increase of 2% year-on-year. The base model iPhone 17 remains the best-selling smartphone this quarter, with significant upgrades narrowing the gap with the Pro models, supporting sales.Apple's stock price closed down 0.14% on Tuesday and fell 0.23% after hours, with a market capitalization currently reported at $4.52 trillion. For Samsung Electronics, two models from the Galaxy S series entered the top ten; the Galaxy S26 Ultra became Samsung's best-selling model this quarter, improving its ranking by 5 places compared to the previous generation, and it is also the best-selling Android model this quarter; this is the first time a super high-end Android device has led Android sales in the second quarter.

A Reuters survey shows that most economists believe the Bank of Japan will take action faster than previously expected, and will raise interest rates again in September, with the terminal rate potentially being higher. 57% of economists expect an interest rate hike next month, a significant increase from 5% in July. Ayako Fujita, Chief Economist for Japan at JPMorgan, stated that delaying the rate hike could lead to market turmoil. In addition, more than two-thirds of respondents believe that the recent US-Japan joint foreign exchange intervention has had limited effects.

Analyst Ted (@TedPillows) stated that the Coinbase Ethereum premium has turned positive, indicating that institutions are accumulating. In related discussions, market participants noted that a positive premium means that U.S. demand is beginning to re-emerge, and Ethereum is showing some strength.The Coinbase premium is typically used to measure the premium or discount level of asset prices on the Coinbase platform relative to other major trading platforms. When this indicator turns from negative to positive, it is often interpreted as U.S. investors, particularly institutional funds, being relatively active in buying, providing support for spot demand. The recent rebound in Ethereum-related premiums is viewed by some observers as one of the signals of marginal improvement in liquidity.

According to The Information, blockchain infrastructure company LayerZero will launch the blockchain trading platform ATLAS in the fall of 2026, primarily targeting financial institutions, with no consumer-facing applications.ATLAS will be based on the Zero blockchain announced by LayerZero in February this year, initially supporting spot crypto assets and perpetual contracts, with plans to expand to prediction contracts, futures, and options in the future.Citadel Securities, DTCC, and the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, ICE, are all partners of Zero. LayerZero stated that top global market makers will provide liquidity on the first day of ATLAS's launch.

Research institution Digitimes stated that with the surge in AI-driven infrastructure spending, major cloud service providers are expected to place greater emphasis on operational efficiency and financial discipline in the second half of 2026. Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft reported a combined cloud business revenue of $106.3 billion in the second quarter, with an annual growth rate accelerating to 43%. These companies are expected to increase their total capital expenditures to $74.5 billion.

The founder of Strategy, Michael Saylor, stated that Bitcoin is gradually transitioning from an early "peer-to-peer electronic cash" experiment to a global digital capital infrastructure. As Bitcoin is widely adopted by individuals, funds, publicly listed companies, banks, custodians, trading platforms, and governments, some of the early Bitcoin culture has evolved from a risk defense mechanism into a form of "orthodoxy," which includes viewing self-custody as the only legitimate way to hold Bitcoin and categorizing financial products related to Bitcoin, such as ETFs, bonds, preferred stocks, and derivatives, as "paper Bitcoin." These views played an important role in the early development of Bitcoin, but are now insufficient to explain its expanding economic ecosystem.The more important role of Bitcoin in the future may not be to replace fiat currency as a daily payment tool, but rather to become a scarce, globally liquid, programmable "digital capital" that does not rely on an issuer. Fiat currency will still play a core role in taxes, wages, contracts, and everyday business, while Bitcoin can form a new layered financial system with banks, securities, credit, insurance, and corporations. Self-custody should be viewed as a right rather than an obligation, and professional custody, multi-signature, institutional custody, and trading platform products can all play a role based on different users' risk tolerance and actual needs. What truly needs to be vigilant is not all counterparties, but those counterparties lacking transparency, isolation mechanisms, governance capabilities, and risk control; "do not trust any institution" should shift to risk identification of different institutions.The next phase of the Bitcoin ecosystem will be the expansion of the "digital capital market," rather than a return to a closed pure Bitcoin economy. With the continuous development of spot Bitcoin ETFs, publicly listed companies' Bitcoin reserves, bonds, preferred stocks, and other financial products, Bitcoin is becoming a new underlying asset that connects stocks, debt, credit, currency, derivatives, and even the machine economy. This trend can be termed the "Bitcoin Reformation," with core principles including "protocol minimalism, economic maximization," "replacing founder worship with first principles," "self-custody as a right rather than a ritual," "judging security by evidence rather than brand," "replacing counterparty nihilism with counterparty identification," and allowing fiat currency and Bitcoin to coexist in the long term. Bitcoin is not abandoning its early core principles but is breaking free from its cultural limitations: it is transitioning from electronic cash to digital gold and further becoming a digital capital network that encompasses capital, credit, equity, debt, currency, and the machine economy.

According to Coinglass data, the Coinbase Bitcoin premium index has reappeared with a positive signal for the first time since May 19, reporting 0.0052%, ending a historical longest negative premium period of 97 consecutive days until August 23. Although these positive values are still relatively sporadic, they indicate that selling pressure from institutions has eased, undoubtedly helping the market continue to push upward, with the next step waiting for institutions to truly return and generate substantial demand.The previous longest record of negative premium was 40 consecutive days from January 16 to February 24 this year, and the second longest was about 30 days of continuous negative premium during last year's "1011 crash." The Coinbase Bitcoin premium index is used to measure the price difference between Coinbase Pro and Binance for Bitcoin. A sustained negative index typically means that Coinbase's quotes are relatively low, reflecting weak buying in the U.S. market or significant selling pressure, but it is not advisable to directly conclude that institutional funds are flowing out based solely on this indicator.

According to a report by the Korean News Agency, the Financial Supervisory Service of Korea submitted data to the National Assembly's Political Affairs Committee, revealing that as of the end of July, the five major virtual asset exchanges in Korea (Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Digital Asset Exchange, Gopax) have registered a total of 6,590 corporate accounts.In terms of the distribution of exchanges, Bithumb has the highest number of registered corporate accounts, reaching 3,280; the operator of Upbit, Dunamu, has 2,086 accounts. The two major exchanges account for a total of 5,366 corporate accounts, which is 81.4% of the total. Additionally, Korbit has 620, Coinone has 539, and Gopax has 65.In terms of compliance, there are a total of 711 corporate accounts that have completed customer identity verification (KYC), accounting for 10.8% of all corporate accounts. Among them, Upbit has the most with 290; Bithumb has 199, Korbit has 184, and Coinone and Gopax have 33 and 5, respectively. In terms of the scale of virtual asset holdings, Korean corporate accounts hold approximately 43.377 billion Korean won (about 31.2 million USD), with Upbit having the highest share, holding approximately 27.08 billion Korean won, accounting for 62.4% of the total; Bithumb holds about 6.29 billion Korean won, and Coinone holds about 5.15 billion Korean won. The deposit scale of corporate accounts is approximately 9.13 billion Korean won.

According to The Block, STS Digital CEO Maxime Seiler stated that there is a divergence between cryptocurrency asset prices and institutional adoption. He said, "From a price perspective, we are still in a crypto winter, but from the institutional side, we have entered a summer."Seiler noted that institutions are more focused on adopting underlying technologies, and funds do not necessarily flow into tokens, so technological adoption has not yet been fully reflected in coin prices. He also pointed out that the Bitcoin futures basis has converged from an annualized 20%-30% during the 2021 cycle to close to the risk-free rate, and it is more stable than in the previous cycle, partly because the channels for dollars entering and exiting the crypto market are deeper.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire stated that the new proposed accounting rules will provide a significant strategic boost to the adoption of digital dollars like USDC.He mentioned that, combined with the GENIUS Act, the FASB rules will enable USDC to be widely used by global enterprises and financial institutions, which is of great strategic importance.

According to CoinDesk, Ripple announced a partnership with the lending platform Clearpool and the credit management institution Cicada Partners to launch a credit fund aimed at institutions, which will provide working capital loans to fintech and payment companies in the form of the RLUSD stablecoin on the XRP Ledger.Cicada is responsible for borrower screening, loan term setting, and credit risk monitoring; Clearpool is responsible for building and managing the loan pool infrastructure; Ripple participates as a limited partner, contributing funds and enjoying the same terms as other institutional investors.

According to on-chain analysis platform Lookonchain (@lookonchain), in the past 6 hours, a large whale or institution has sold a total of 871,000 $HYPE through the over-the-counter trading platform FalconX, worth approximately $64.82 million.

Citi plans to offer Bitcoin custody services for institutional clients through its Custody+ platform later this year. This service will integrate Bitcoin with traditional assets such as stocks and bonds within the same custody framework, allowing clients to access custody, settlement, foreign exchange, cash, and liquidity services through a single system. Bitcoin will be the first digital asset supported by Citi's new custody service, and Citi has not yet announced a specific launch date or the list of initial clients.Custody+ is launched by Citi Investor Services, and Citi's custody business covers over 100 markets, operating its own custody network in 62 markets. Citi states that its goal is for banks to self-custody native digital assets rather than relying solely on external exchanges or other digital asset companies. The project has been in development for about two to three years, with Citi first disclosing related plans in 2025. Custody+ will provide real-time settlement, foreign exchange services, automated hedging, cash management, and liquidity tools. The Single Event Processing in its custody system currently processes over 80% of event volume in real-time; in the U.S., this system has reduced the processing time for some voluntary corporate actions by up to 92%, with 96% of related events completed within two hours. Chris Cox, head of Citi Investor Services, stated that Citi invests over $2 billion annually in its Services platform.