Night crypto market digest: Chainalysis vs. US authorities, Stripe mega-deal, and criticism of Pump.fun
While the market consolidated in a narrow range, several landmark events emerged in the industry: analytics giant Chainalysis entered a legal confrontation with the U.S. government, Stripe is preparing to acquire AI infrastructure, and the founder of Curve Finance lashed out at memecoin platforms.
Performance of Leading Assets
Bitcoin was trading near the $63,389 mark by 8:35 AM Moscow time. During the night hours, a recovery from $62,650 to $63,500 was observed on the 15-minute chart. Over the past week, the leading cryptocurrency lost about 2.49% of its value.
Ethereum showed a similar picture, holding near $1,897. Overnight, the asset bounced from $1,868 to $1,904, but its price fell by 1.17% over the week.
Among the top 20 assets by market capitalization, Hyperliquid (HYPE) stood out, gaining 8.69% over seven days. Meanwhile, XRP lost 3.07%, and Solana (SOL) dropped 1.75%. In the top 100, the best result was shown by Velvet (VELVET) with a rise of 116.05%. Ether.fi (ETHFI) and Chainlink (LINK) increased by 30.10% and 14.88%, respectively.
The week's laggard was Uniswap (UNI), which plunged by 19.68%. Aptos (APT) and LayerZero (ZRO) also came under pressure, losing 12.34% and 10.70%.
Flows into spot crypto ETFs were mixed. Bitcoin funds recorded an outflow of about $389.71 million, while products on Solana attracted $10.26 million and those on Ethereum — $2.26 million.
Over the past 24 hours, positions of 50,362 traders were liquidated for a total of $114.03 million. The largest liquidation order occurred on Binance — for the BTCUSDT pair at $2.98 million.
Key Events of the Night
Chainalysis filed a lawsuit against U.S. authorities in a district court. The company claims that the Department of Homeland Security and immigration service ICE violated standard competitive procedures by directly awarding an exclusive contract to a competitor — TRM Labs. The plaintiff seeks to have the deal annulled. TRM Labs sided with the government, and the court imposed a protective order due to potential trade secrets. Hearings are scheduled for September 2, 2026.
Payment service Stripe is close to acquiring the startup OpenRouter, which positions itself as the "Stripe for the AI world." The deal amount will exceed $7 billion — despite the company being valued at $1.3 billion in May 2025. OpenRouter is developing a unified gateway for connecting to more than 400 AI models from various developers. About 8 million people use the service. Stripe itself does not comment on the deal, calling the information rumors.
Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov criticized the Pump.fun platform and the Phantom wallet. He called Pump.fun a "casino of fraudulent memecoins" and stated that Phantom's work with hardware wallets is inferior to the MetaMask experience. ClawPump co-founder under the nickname Tomi204 objected that Pump.fun merely provides a service, and responsibility for its use lies with users. Egorov countered that software products often lose quality after gaining market recognition.
Analyst's observations: The Chainalysis lawsuit could set a precedent for the entire industry — it calls into question the transparency of government procurement in blockchain analytics. As for the criticism of Pump.fun, it reflects the growing tension between the "old school" of DeFi and new speculative formats that attract the mass user but create reputational risks for the entire ecosystem.