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According to on-chain analyst @ai_9684xtpa, 21 hours ago, Wintermute received 2.5 million LAPTOP from the LAPTOP multi-signature address, and subsequently distributed the relevant tokens to multiple exchange deposit addresses.Previously, GSR Markets and G20 received market-making tokens a few days ago, and Wintermute may be a newly added market-making participant. If this transfer is indeed part of a market-making arrangement, the total amount of LAPTOP actually used for market-making will increase to 23 million tokens, accounting for 2.3% of the total supply. Among them, GSR Markets received 15.5 million, G20 received 5 million, and Wintermute received 2.5 million.

The LayerZero research team, in collaboration with Oblivious Labs and researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, has published a paper proposing a new automated market maker mechanism called OTTER, aimed at enhancing resistance to Maximum Extractable Value (MEV).OTTER employs a batch clearing mechanism similar to VCG auctions, making it a dominant strategy for traders to report valuations and budgets truthfully, while weakening the ability of block builders to profit through transaction ordering, sandwich attacks, or injecting false bids.

The automated market maker Aquifer on Solana was attacked, resulting in a loss of approximately $2.5 million. Aquifer subsequently issued a "white hat" offer on-chain, requesting the attacker to return at least 80% of the stolen assets to the designated Solana and Ethereum recovery addresses by September 3 at 22:00, and may retain up to 20% as a bounty.If the attacker complies, the project team promises not to file a civil lawsuit against them.

According to CoinDesk, as Bitcoin surged from about $62,000 to over $77,000 last week, liquidating approximately $3 billion in leveraged short positions, major crypto market makers such as Abraxas Capital, Fasanara Capital, and Wintermute quietly established short positions in perpetual contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars on Hyperliquid.Lookonchain data shows that the three institutions collectively hold short positions of 138,569 ETH (approximately $338 million) and 3,425 BTC (approximately $265 million); meanwhile, Abraxas Capital withdrew 73,872 ETH (approximately $173 million) from Binance in the past four days.This strategy is known as cash arbitrage or basis trading: traders hold spot positions while shorting an equivalent amount of assets through perpetual contracts to hedge against price volatility risks, primarily earning the funding rates paid by longs to shorts. In previous months, funding rates were long suppressed or even turned negative, but this month's rebound has quickly turned funding rates positive, reopening the arbitrage window. Aegis data shows that the 30-day average funding rate for Bitcoin perpetual contracts on August 24 reached an annualized 6.7%, with a 7-day average of 8.7%; 21shares capital markets noted that basis trading for mainstream assets like Solana is also becoming lucrative.This trading has extended to regulated markets: Glassnode data shows that CME Bitcoin futures open interest has risen from about 87,000 BTC to 122,000 BTC.

According to Digital Asset, Park Soo-young, a member of the Korean National Power Party, criticized the government's plan to tax virtual asset gains, stating that it is "a threat of a tax bomb if one does not invest in the domestic stock market," and demanded an immediate withdrawal.Member Park Soo-young stated on her YouTube channel: "I hope this punitive tax plan that puts 13 million digital asset users in danger can be withdrawn immediately." She added, "This does not mean that people will invest in domestic stocks; on the contrary, it will only accelerate the outflow of national wealth." She cited that approximately 124 trillion won flowed into overseas digital asset exchanges from January to September last year.

According to Bitcoin.com, Gurinder Singh Josan MP and Lord Vaizey, co-chairs of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Crypto and Digital Assets (APPG), have written to the CEOs of major UK banks requesting clarification on whether they provide account services to crypto businesses, what restrictions are placed on digital asset transactions, and whether these policies will be adjusted with the implementation of the new regulatory framework in the UK.The MPs pointed out that access to banking may be the single biggest obstacle to the development of crypto and digital asset businesses in the UK. If licensed crypto businesses are still unable to obtain basic banking services, the competitive goals of the new regulatory system will be difficult to achieve.Lucy Rigby, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, has previously stated that banking service restrictions should not be imposed on FCA-authorized crypto businesses solely due to the nature of the industry. The deadline for submitting written evidence for this inquiry is August 31, and the APPG will use this to make policy recommendations to the government.

OpenGradient co-founder Matthew posted that his market maker (MM) team's funds on the BitMart trading platform are currently unable to be withdrawn, with the reason suspected to be related to the platform's insolvency. Matthew stated that BitMart still required token holders to lock their assets on the platform a week before halting related services, an action that he described as "shocking."He believes that BitMart's previous push for users to lock their assets was essentially just to gain liquidity. Currently, BitMart has not responded to these related accusations. This incident has raised community concerns about the security of funds on centralized trading platforms, asset custody, and liquidity management risks.

According to MBN, South Korea's People Power Party member Jeong Seong-guk plans to propose a bill to postpone the implementation date for taxing virtual asset income by three years, from January 1, 2027, to January 1, 2030. The member pointed out that by delaying the implementation date until a comprehensive review of related systems, including the taxation of virtual assets, is completed, a safeguard can be established to enhance taxpayer expectations and prevent system chaos.According to current regulations, starting from January 1 of next year, income generated from the transfer or lending of virtual assets will be classified as "other income" and will be subject to income tax. Therefore, the portion of annual profits exceeding 2.5 million won will be taxed at a rate of 22%, which includes 20% for other income tax and 2% for local income tax. Amid recent stock market turmoil and soaring real estate prices triggering public attacks on the government and ruling party, the People Power Party seems to be trying to gain public support by actively proposing legislation aimed at protecting the interests of virtual asset market investors. The People Power Party has consistently opposed the government, advocating for the abolition of this tax.

According to Bloomberg, to advance the landmark cryptocurrency legislation "Clarity Act," bipartisan senators have proposed an ethical provision to Trump that may include a clause allowing the president to defer capital gains tax on his cryptocurrency assets. The proposal requires the president to divest from cryptocurrency-related businesses, and the relevant terms are still being negotiated between the White House and lawmakers. In June 2025, Trump reported that his family's cryptocurrency business generated over $1.4 billion in revenue, indicating that most of his income has come from digital assets benefiting from his own policies. Democratic senators have made strong ethical provisions a condition for supporting the bill, which aims to clarify the regulatory authority over the cryptocurrency industry.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that Liu Zhou, the founder and principal operator of the cryptocurrency financial services company MyTrade, was recently fined $10,000 in federal court in Boston for participating in a cryptocurrency market manipulation scheme.Prosecutors stated that MyTrade provided so-called "Volume Support" services to cryptocurrency projects through its "MyTrade MM" platform, using bots to execute false trades (wash trading) across multiple cryptocurrency exchanges, artificially creating trading volume and market activity to mislead investors. According to the plea agreement, MyTrade MM has ceased providing "Volume Support" services and permanently shut down the related wash trading bots, while adding a statement on its website acknowledging that "Volume Support constitutes wash trading, which is illegal under U.S. law." The U.S. Department of Justice stated that the case was jointly pursued by the U.S. Attorney's Office and the Boston division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

Web3 investment banking and consulting platform Forgd announced that its market maker leaderboard has officially launched on DefiLlama. This leaderboard ranks mainstream crypto market makers based on standardized metrics such as pricing, market depth, reliability, and execution quality, helping traders and analysts assess the performance of market makers behind token liquidity.The leaderboard data comes from the real-time performance monitored by Forgd tools across over 500 token projects and 35 market makers. Forgd previously launched this leaderboard in May 2026, and this integration with DefiLlama opens the data to a broader market audience.

The FBI submitted data disclosure to the legislative committee, revealing that losses related to cryptocurrency kiosks in Texas amounted to $56.8 million in 2025, involving 1,179 complaints, making it the highest loss among all states in the U.S. The total number of related complaints nationwide was 13,460, with reported losses increasing by 58% year-on-year to $389 million. Cryptocurrency kiosks can accept cash and exchange it for cryptocurrency, typically set up at gas stations and convenience stores.Statistics from the Texas Tribune show that there are about 4,000 such devices in Texas, where scammers induce victims to withdraw money from their bank accounts and deposit it into the machines. Jesse Saucillo, Deputy Commissioner of the Texas Department of Banking, stated that once funds are transferred out, recovering them is nearly impossible, as the money typically flows into unhosted wallets and then into mixers. He added that AI-generated police and state agency impersonation content makes phone inducements more deceptive.Data from AARP indicates that since 2023, approximately 30 states in the U.S. have enacted laws related to cryptocurrency kiosks. Indiana fully banned such devices in March, followed by Tennessee and Minnesota. Texas House Committee Chairman Rep. Cole Hefner stated that the state will consider measures beyond regulatory scope.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin (@EmberCN), an address belonging to the initial team/investors of MakerDAO sold all 1,050 MKR, which had been held for nearly 10 years, 20 minutes ago, exchanging it for 1.316 million USDC before transferring it to Kraken exchange. This address originally received the aforementioned MKR in April 2016 and had not moved any of it for 10 years, except for a migration operation during the token upgrade in 2018.

Uniswap announces the official launch of DualPool Hook. DualPool is an open-source Uniswap v4 Hook, jointly designed and developed by Spark and Uniswap Labs, allowing market makers to earn yields by depositing idle assets into lending protocols during the waiting period for liquidity funds to be executed, and to withdraw funds back to the liquidity pool when a transaction occurs.From an external perspective, DualPool is indistinguishable from a regular Uniswap v4 liquidity pool, and traders, aggregators, and solvers still complete transactions through the Pool Manager. Its internal mechanism is that liquidity funds are stored in an ERC-4626 yield vault and are automatically withdrawn when a transaction needs to be executed, deployed to concentrated liquidity positions, thereby ensuring transaction execution while allowing idle funds to continuously generate lending yields.

U.S. Congressman Ritchie Torres has requested the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to investigate whether the upcoming Truth API from Truth Social's parent company Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG) violates federal securities laws, and to assess whether it involves issues such as market manipulation, investor protection, and conflicts of interest.According to previous reports, the Truth API will launch on August 1, providing paying customers with real-time data access to public posts from popular Truth Social accounts, with authorization fees reaching up to $100,000 per month.

According to BLOCKMEDIA, the South Korean police are investigating a case of political interference in the competition of the cryptocurrency market. A former assistant to independent lawmaker Kim Byung-ki is accused of pressuring the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) in February last year to force Upbit to terminate its fee waiver activities for $USDC and $USDT, in order to alleviate the financial pressure on its competitor Bithumb, which was suffering due to a zero-fee promotion.The suspicion arises from the fact that the assistant obtained an informal advisory position at Bithumb months after the interference, while at the same time, the lawmaker's son was also hired by the exchange as an intern. Bithumb denies any knowledge of political interference and insists that the fee adjustments were independent business decisions.

Several individuals familiar with the discussions on the "Digital Asset Market Structure Act" have stated that U.S. lawmakers plan to release an updated version of the cryptocurrency market structure bill this week. The new text combines the provisions previously approved by the U.S. Senate Banking Committee and the Agriculture Committee, and was negotiated by the two committees on multiple terms.