Odaily News: Cathie Wood's Ark Invest purchased shares of Block Inc., Securitize, and Nvidia on Monday, with amounts of $15.4 million, $1 million, and $22.8 million, respectively.

Odaily News AI voice-to-text startup Wispr Flow has completed a $280 million Series B funding round at a valuation of $2 billion, led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Notable Capital, NEA, Neo Ventures, and others. In November last year, Wispr Flow completed a $25 million Series A extension round at a valuation of $700 million. Following this round, the company's total cumulative funding has reached $361 million.

Wispr Flow primarily provides AI voice dictation tools for writing and office scenarios. (Reuters)

Odaily News, according to Gate data, Korea's KOSPI index has expanded its gains to 3%. SK Hynix is up over 6%, while Samsung Electronics has risen nearly 4%.

Odaily News: N3XT Bank, founded by former Signature Bank Chairman Scott Shay, has received regulatory approval from the state of Wyoming to launch an instant cross-border payment service for non-customers, directly competing with the SWIFT network.

N3XT adopts a tokenized cross-border payment solution, allowing customers to send US dollars to any recipient 24/7, while conducting anti-money laundering screening on recipients' digital wallets through a "Know Your Wallet" process. Unlike traditional banks, N3XT holds all deposits in cash or short-term Treasury bonds and does not engage in lending, ensuring instant liquidity. Signature Bank collapsed during the regional banking crisis of 2023.

Odaily News – Crypto market analysis firm Santiment Intelligence disclosed on August 17 that Bitcoin balances on exchanges have risen to their highest level since June 15. Balances recovered from approximately 1.304 million BTC on July 28 to about 1.332 million BTC on August 16, an increase of roughly 28,000 BTC, erasing approximately 84% of the previous six weeks' outflows.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allows in-kind creation for spot Bitcoin ETFs, permitting authorized participants to deliver Bitcoin directly to eligible funds in exchange for shares. ETF capital can source Bitcoin from over-the-counter trading desks, existing holders, and other off-exchange channels, without necessarily corresponding to a decline in exchange wallet balances.

In the first full week of August, U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw net inflows of $853.54 million, with net inflows for five consecutive trading days, while BlackRock's IBIT attracted $693.5 million. On August 12, these ETFs recorded net outflows of $61.16 million, primarily from Fidelity and BlackRock; exchange balances have since stabilized at around 1.332 million BTC. (Bitcoin.com News)

Odaily News, according to M&G Investment, as inflation pressures ease, the Bank of Korea may slow the pace of rate hikes contrary to expectations, potentially strengthening Korean government bonds. Low Guan Yi, head of the company's Asian fixed income business, stated that the AI boom has led to a significant increase in tax revenue from Korean chip makers and hardware suppliers, which will also enable the government to reduce its borrowing scale. She said: "We believe the Korean bond yield curve has priced in too many rate hikes." She also added that the company has increased its holdings of Korean government bonds over the past two months. "Given the unexpected revenue windfall the government is currently receiving, the supply of Korean government bonds will decrease in the future."

Low's remarks reflect the view of an emerging but growing group of Korea watchers: despite recent capital outflows and widespread expectations of further rate hikes by the Bank of Korea, they believe that geopolitical factors and sustained AI enthusiasm will ease pressure on the bond market in the coming weeks. Korean government bonds have faced pressure in recent weeks, with net foreign selling reaching approximately $1.2 billion in July, the highest level since February 2025. The 10-year yield has risen 22 basis points since the end of June.

Odaily News CNBC host Jim Cramer said on Monday that the AI boom has transformed the previously highly cyclical storage industry. Despite SanDisk (SNDK), Seagate (STX), Micron (MU), and Western Digital (WDC) having already gained 653%, 261%, 254%, and 211% respectively year-to-date, it is still not too late to buy now.

He noted that storage supply remains tight, while manufacturers are increasingly locking in demand through long-term customer agreements and using cash for share buybacks rather than aggressive capacity expansion. In addition, he is particularly bullish on Micron, believing that if data center construction does not slow down, Micron still has the potential to double again before this cycle ends. (CNBC)

Odaily Planet Daily News: The Monad Foundation announced that it has recently completed a liquidity program, offering certain early investors the opportunity to purchase their locked MON tokens at a discounted price subject to the applicable four-year lock-up period. MON tokens purchased by the Foundation through this program remain subject to the same lock-up restrictions.

The program, capped at a total purchase amount of $60 million, was designed to provide an orderly liquidity exit channel for early investors whose liquidity needs or investment objectives may have changed, while also supporting long-term interest alignment among remaining token holders. Nearly all contacted holders chose not to participate in the program, which has now concluded. The Monad Foundation has never sold, offered to sell, or sought to sell any MON tokens through over-the-counter transactions or any other means, and there are currently no processes in place for such sales. Any claims to the contrary are untrue.

Odaily News: Economist and Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff posted on X, stating that he is unsure why Bitcoin did not decline today, but the bounce provides HODLers with another selling opportunity. He questioned what factors are supporting Bitcoin, noting that $65,000 is a resistance level with limited upside and significant downside.

Odaily reported that The Kobeissi Letter posted on X platform, stating that the market exposure of U.S.-listed leveraged ETFs has risen to $420 billion, the highest level since early July, with an increase of over $100 billion in the past three weeks. During the same period, assets under management (AUM) increased by approximately $40 billion to $180 billion.

It noted that the gap between AUM and market exposure stems from the leverage effect, with leveraged ETFs' actual market exposure currently standing at about 2.5 times their nominal AUM. At the current growth rate, both market exposure and AUM could potentially surpass the historical highs set in June this year as early as next month.

Odaily News: Imran, co-founder of Alliance, stated on X that Farcaster is a valuable infrastructure and application experiment, but a decentralized social graph alone is insufficient to attract users away from traditional social platforms like X.

He believes the direction truly worth focusing on is social trading—integrating new token discovery, speculative trading, and PnL reputation into a native product loop, a model that is currently difficult for traditional social platforms like X and Instagram to replicate. Additionally, Imran summarized this product evolution path as MetaMask → Phantom → Farcaster → Moonshot → Vector → Fomo/Pump, noting that each generation of products further reveals what crypto users genuinely care about.

Previously, Neynar co-founder Rish Mukherji posted on X that the team has initiated a process to find new ownership or operational teams for Farcaster, Clanker, and Neynar.

Odaily News - Neynar co-founder Rish Mukherji posted on X platform, stating that the team has initiated a process to find new custodial or operating teams for Farcaster, Clanker, and Neynar, and is currently in discussions with several teams that may be suitable for operating decentralized social applications and related developer products.

Rish stated that as circumstances have changed over the past few months, the Neynar team is no longer the right fit to lead the next phase of development for these products. The company will return the funds on its balance sheet, most of which remain intact, while team members will pivot to new directions. He also expressed continued optimism that Farcaster will find a long-term sustainable development model in its next phase.

Odaily Odaily News The one-stop token deployment platform Printr has announced the initiation of its shutdown process, with all operations ceasing on August 31, 2026. The team stated that over the past three months, they have explored all viable options, but due to a lack of funding and distribution support in the current market environment, the project can no longer sustain itself.

Starting August 18, all on-chain staking positions and staking rewards will be automatically unstaked and returned to the original deposit addresses, after which the staking function will be suspended. Due to the project shutdown, the originally planned Token Generation Event and airdrop will be canceled. After August 31, the Printr application interface will go offline, but tokens issued through the platform will continue to exist as independent on-chain assets. The team expressed deep regret over its failure to fulfill the airdrop commitment.

Odaily News Tokenized stocks' market share has risen from 5% at the start of the year to 15%, with a total market cap of approximately $2.8 billion, making it one of the few RWA categories to achieve growth. In August, RWA transfer volume doubled to $20 billion, up from $9 billion in July. Ondo Finance, Binance (bStock), and xStocks collectively hold a 77% market share, with Ondo Finance leading at $957 million, followed by bStock at $622 million and xStocks at $600 million. All three use synthetic asset structures to track the performance of underlying stocks; other projects such as Securitize and Superstate are focused on bringing actual equity on-chain, granting on-chain issued shares the same rights as traditional shares.