While most market participants were resting, digital assets showed modest but telling growth. Bitcoin (BTC) held near the $79,815 mark, managing to gain 1.28% over the day and testing the $78,600–$81,200 range. Ethereum (ETH) remained in the shadow of the leading cryptocurrency, showing symbolic growth of 0.14% to $2,498, with intraday volatility not exceeding $55.
Altcoins and ETFs: Who Captured Investor Attention
Buyers dominated the top 25 by market capitalization. The growth leaders were Solana (SOL) with a gain of 5.48%, Monero (XMR) at 2.73%, and Gram (GRAM) at 1.95%. Only a few assets were in the red zone: Canton (CC) lost 2.6%, Litecoin (LTC) dropped 0.94%, and Bitcoin Cash (BCH) fell 0.71%. Among the top 100, the memecoin Official Trump (TRUMP) stood out, surging 23.73%, while Ethena (ENA) and Jupiter (JUP) rose 11.81% and 8.39%, respectively. The laggards were SPX6900 (SPX) with a decline of 5.2% and Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) at 3.92%.
Institutional interest persists. Spot Bitcoin ETFs attracted $242.24 million, Ethereum funds brought in $234.51 million, and Solana funds $60.91 million. Inflows were also recorded into products on Hyperliquid ($24.42 million) and XRP ($18.47 million). Against this backdrop, liquidations on the futures market reached $424.84 million, affecting 84,131 traders. The main blow fell on short positions — $253.77 million versus $171.08 million for longs. The largest liquidation order on Binance for the ETHUSDT pair amounted to $12.40 million.
Payment Infrastructure and Security: Key Events of the Night
South Korean giant Dunamu, which operates the Upbit exchange, has entered into a strategic partnership with Visa. The parties intend to jointly develop stablecoin payments, international transfers, and AI-based financial services, and are also exploring business models based on the dollar stablecoin OUSD. Specific products have not yet been announced, but the direction is clear: traditional payment networks are increasingly integrating digital currencies.
Meanwhile, the OneKey Anzen team reported reproducing a transaction substitution attack in the Ethereum application of Ledger version 1.22.1. According to OneKey's founder, due to a conflict between display logic and the transaction buffer, an attacker can rewrite an operation while the user is reviewing a legitimate one on screen. Ledger confirmed the vulnerability in bulletin LSB 023, noting that the issue concerns input/output handling in the SDK, not the operating system or firmware. The fix was released in SDK 26.6.1 back on August 21, but users need to update applications through Ledger Live — firmware alone is not enough.
Finally, UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan and his partners received 49% of WLTC Holdings — the holding company of the future World Liberty Financial bank. The stake was structured through the entity StringZ Holding RSC, while about 38% belongs to a company linked to the Trump family. In August, the OCC granted World Liberty preliminary conditional approval to establish a national trust bank that will issue, redeem, and custody the USD1 stablecoin. It is worth recalling that the Sheikh already invested $500 million in World Liberty Financial in January 2025, receiving 49% of the company itself.
My conclusion: the market is in an accumulation phase, and institutional inflows into ETFs and partnerships like Visa with Upbit point to a long-term legitimization trend. However, vulnerabilities in hardware wallets remain a serious reminder of self-custody risks — update your software immediately.