BTC and S&P 500 hit fresh highs last week, but both have since pulled back. Now the spotlight shifts to Ethereum — will it print its own record soon?

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🥇 Cryptocurrencies

🔸 US Treasury & Bitcoin: Veteran investor Scott Bessent suggested that the U.S. Treasury may explore neutral strategies to accumulate BTC — a signal that government-level positioning is no longer science fiction.

🔸 Coinbase Institutional: Predicts altseason could begin in September, once the Fed cuts rates and retail inflows accelerate. Timing lines up with Ethereum ETF momentum.

🔸 Monero 51% attack: Mining pool Qubic confirmed it temporarily controlled Monero’s chain, replacing 6 blocks and invalidating 60. A reminder: even older privacy coins are not immune to network risk.

🔸 Bitmine mega-bid: The firm plans to raise another $20B for Ethereum purchases 🐋 — highlighting ETH as the institutional favorite of this cycle.

🔸 ETH ETF record: August 11 saw $1.02B in inflows to ETH spot ETFs — a new record, surpassing Bitcoin inflows.

🔸 5 years of corporate Bitcoin: Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy quietly added 115 BTC ($18M) to its treasury, while Metaplanet in Japan bought 518 BTC ($61.4M). The corporate playbook continues.

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🏦 Exchanges

🔸 Coinbase x Deribit: Coinbase completed its $2.9B acquisition of options exchange Deribit, cementing its dominance in institutional derivatives.

🔸 OKX burns 65M tokens: The OKB token spiked 200% on news of the record burn — a powerful example of tokenomics in action.

🔸 Bullish IPO: Trading in Bullish shares opened at $100, almost a 2.5x from its IPO pricing. Institutional bets on exchanges are back.

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📈 Macro & Finance

🔸 U.S. Inflation: CPI for July came in at 2.7%, flat vs. June (forecast was 2.8%). PPI rose to 3.3% (forecast 2.5%). Inflationary pressures remain sticky.

🔸 OpenAI ambition: CEO Sam Altman says the company wants to raise trillions of dollars and is even interested in acquiring Google. AI capital wars are escalating.

🔸 Chips & geopolitics: Nvidia and AMD agreed to pay 15% of China chip sales profits to the U.S. government — a policy blending taxation with industrial strategy.

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⚖️ Regulation & Policy

🔸 Trump’s legal win: A U.S. appeals court authorized Trump to withhold billions in foreign aid — part of a broader shift in federal spending priorities.

🔸 Stablecoin yield under fire: U.S. banks are lobbying to ban crypto platforms from paying yield on stablecoins, aiming to close a legal loophole that challenges their monopoly on interest-bearing deposits.

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💡 Key Takeaway

• Ethereum is the asset to watch. Outflows from exchanges + record ETF inflows + mega-bids from institutions set the stage for new highs.
• Macro still matters: Inflation remains sticky; Fed’s next rate move could unlock altseason.
• Exchanges are consolidating: Coinbase’s Deribit buy + Bullish IPO prove that the “infrastructure trade” is alive.
• AI & chips: Parallel to crypto, massive capital battles are unfolding in tech.

The market is correcting, but the bigger trend is intact. The next breakout may not come from Bitcoin, but from Ethereum.

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With experience and realism,
George Zimmerman
Your broker & market partner