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Greenland Capital Management LP lessened its stake in shares of Avnet, Inc. (NASDAQ:AVT – Free Report) by 43.0% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 12,613 shares of the company’s stock after selling 9,525 shares during the period. Greenland Capital Management LP’s holdings in Avnet were worth $1,120,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Several other institutional investors have also recently made changes to their positions in the company. Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management Co. Ltd. bought a new position in Avnet in the second quarter worth approximately $25,000. State of Wyoming purchased a new stake in shares of Avnet during the 2nd quarter valued at $37,000. Summit Securities Group LLC acquired a new position in Avnet during the 4th quarter valued at about $28,000. BOKF NA grew its stake in shares of Avnet by 1,116.7% during the third quarter. BOKF NA now owns 584 shares of the company’s stock worth $31,000 after acquiring an additional 536 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Elevation Wealth Partners LLC grew its position in Avnet by 38.5% during the 2nd quarter. Elevation Wealth Partners LLC now owns 666 shares of the company’s stock worth $59,000 after purchasing an additional 185 shares during the last quarter. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 95.78% of the company’s stock.

Avnet Price Performance Shares of AVT stock opened at $92.06 on Monday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.49, a current ratio of 1.78 and a quick ratio of 0.97. The company has a market capitalization of $7.56 billion, a PE ratio of 23.07, a price-to-earnings-growth ratio of 0.28 and a beta of 1.10. The firm’s 50-day moving average is $89.22 and its two-hundred day moving average is $80.08. Avnet, Inc. has a 12 month low of $44.25 and a 12 month high of $100.00.

Avnet (NASDAQ:AVT – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Wednesday, August 5th. The company reported $2.28 earnings per share for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $1.80 by $0.48. The business had revenue of $8.30 billion during the quarter, compared to analysts’ expectations of $7.56 billion. Avnet had a net margin of 1.21% and a return on equity of 9.57%. The business’s revenue for the quarter was up 47.7% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the prior year, the company posted $0.81 EPS. Avnet has set its Q1 2027 guidance at 2.800-2.900 EPS. Analysts predict that Avnet, Inc. will post 10.45 earnings per share for the current year. Avnet Increases Dividend The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Wednesday, September 23rd. Shareholders of record on Wednesday, September 9th will be paid a dividend of $0.37 per share. This represents a $1.48 annualized dividend and a yield of 1.6%. This is a positive change from Avnet’s previous quarterly dividend of $0.35. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Wednesday, September 9th. Avnet’s payout ratio is 35.09%.

Insiders Place Their Bets In other news, SVP Michael Ryan Mccoy sold 32,052 shares of the stock in a transaction on Wednesday, August 19th. The stock was sold at an average price of $91.10, for a total transaction of $2,919,937.20. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president directly owned 76,674 shares in the company, valued at approximately $6,985,001.40. This represents a 29.48% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. Also, CEO Philip R. Gallagher sold 51,900 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Wednesday, August 12th. The stock was sold at an average price of $98.46, for a total value of $5,110,074.00. Following the sale, the chief executive officer directly owned 168,923 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $16,632,158.58. The trade was a 23.50% decrease in their ownership of the stock. Additional details regarding this sale are available in the official SEC disclosure. 1.90% of the stock is owned by insiders.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In AVT has been the topic of several research analyst reports. Weiss Ratings upgraded Avnet from a “hold (c+)” rating to a “buy (b)” rating in a research note on Friday, August 14th. Truist Financial upped their price target on Avnet from $95.00 to $110.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a report on Thursday, August 6th. Zacks Research upgraded shares of Avnet from a “hold” rating to a “strong-buy” rating in a research report on Friday, August 7th. Wells Fargo & Company raised their target price on Avnet from $70.00 to $72.00 and gave the company an “underweight” rating in a research report on Monday, July 20th. Finally, Bank of America raised shares of Avnet from an “underperform” rating to a “neutral” rating and raised their price target for the stock from $66.00 to $96.00 in a research note on Wednesday, May 13th. Two equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, two have assigned a Buy rating, one has issued a Hold rating and one has given a Sell rating to the company. According to data from MarketBeat.com, Avnet currently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $93.25.

Check Out Our Latest Stock Report on Avnet

Avnet Profile (Free Report)

Avnet, Inc (NASDAQ: AVT) is a global technology distributor and solutions provider specializing in the sourcing, design, and supply chain management of electronic components and embedded systems. The company offers a broad portfolio of semiconductors, interconnect, passive and electromechanical components, as well as embedded hardware and software, cloud solutions, and Internet of Things (IoT) services. Avnet’s offerings aim to support customers through every stage of the product lifecycle, from initial prototype and design to production and end-of-life management.

Founded in 1921 by Charles Avnet, the company has evolved from a regional radio parts supplier into a multinational enterprise.

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Corient Private Wealth LP purchased a new stake in Varonis Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRNS – Free Report) during the 2nd quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The fund purchased 17,226 shares of the technology company’s stock, valued at approximately $723,000.

A number of other hedge funds also recently made changes to their positions in VRNS. Empowered Funds LLC acquired a new stake in shares of Varonis Systems during the 4th quarter valued at about $37,000. Harvest Fund Management Co. Ltd bought a new stake in Varonis Systems in the third quarter valued at about $68,000. EverSource Wealth Advisors LLC raised its position in Varonis Systems by 344.3% in the second quarter. EverSource Wealth Advisors LLC now owns 1,213 shares of the technology company’s stock worth $62,000 after purchasing an additional 940 shares in the last quarter. Advisory Services Network LLC acquired a new position in Varonis Systems in the third quarter worth about $75,000. Finally, Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management Co. Ltd. acquired a new position in Varonis Systems in the second quarter worth about $55,000. Institutional investors and hedge funds own 95.65% of the company’s stock.

Varonis Systems Price Performance NASDAQ:VRNS opened at $46.09 on Monday. The company has a quick ratio of 1.65, a current ratio of 1.65 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.02. The firm has a market cap of $5.29 billion, a PE ratio of -37.47 and a beta of 0.82. Varonis Systems, Inc. has a 12 month low of $19.70 and a 12 month high of $63.90. The company’s 50-day moving average price is $43.87 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $33.00.

Varonis Systems (NASDAQ:VRNS – Get Free Report) last posted its quarterly earnings data on Tuesday, July 28th. The technology company reported $0.04 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.01 by $0.03. Varonis Systems had a negative net margin of 20.55% and a negative return on equity of 19.18%. The company had revenue of $180.02 million during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $176.83 million. During the same quarter last year, the business posted $0.03 earnings per share. The company’s revenue was up 18.3% on a year-over-year basis. Varonis Systems has set its FY 2026 guidance at 0.140-0.150 EPS and its Q3 2026 guidance at 0.020-0.030 EPS. On average, equities analysts anticipate that Varonis Systems, Inc. will post -0.97 EPS for the current fiscal year. Analysts Set New Price Targets A number of equities research analysts have weighed in on the company. Wells Fargo & Company lifted their price objective on Varonis Systems from $35.00 to $50.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Monday, July 20th. UBS Group upped their price objective on Varonis Systems from $37.00 to $58.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, July 21st. Barclays dropped their target price on Varonis Systems from $52.00 to $50.00 and set an “overweight” rating for the company in a report on Wednesday, July 29th. Susquehanna raised their target price on Varonis Systems from $36.00 to $55.00 and gave the stock a “positive” rating in a research report on Wednesday, July 29th. Finally, Citigroup boosted their price target on Varonis Systems from $30.00 to $45.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a research note on Thursday, July 30th. Seventeen analysts have rated the stock with a Buy rating, six have issued a Hold rating and one has assigned a Sell rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat, the stock presently has an average rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus target price of $49.05.

Check Out Our Latest Report on Varonis Systems

Varonis Systems Profile (Free Report)

Varonis Systems is a cybersecurity firm specializing in the protection and management of unstructured data. The company’s flagship Data Security Platform provides advanced analytics for monitoring file systems, email servers, collaboration platforms and cloud storage. By continuously mapping and analyzing data permissions and user behavior, Varonis enables organizations to detect insider threats, verify compliance and remediate exposed data in real time.

Founded in 2005 and headquartered in New York City, Varonis serves a diverse global customer base across financial services, healthcare, media, manufacturing and government.

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For six straight quarters, from the beginning of 2024 all the way through mid-2025, Boeing (BA +0.83%) stock couldn't catch a break. Production volumes were crippled in the wake of the Alaska Airlines door blowout, airplanes piled up, losses mounted, and free cash flow dried up. Every single quarter, Boeing lost money and burned cash -- $12.4 billion in total GAAP losses, and $16.8 billion in negative free cash flow.

But then, a miracle happened.

By mid-2025, Boeing had mostly righted the ship, stabilized its supply chain, and resolved its quality-control issues. Q2 2025 saw Boeing deliver more airplanes in a single quarter than it had ever done since 2018. Revenue rose, losses shrank, and by Q3 2025, free cash flow had turned positive again. While GAAP profitability has remained elusive since, in three of the past four quarters, the aerospace giant has generated positive free cash flow -- $631 million generated last quarter alone -- laying the groundwork for a return to consistent profitability in the future.

Now Boeing just needs to stick the landing.

Image source: Getty Images.

Boeing has a plan After the Alaska Airlines debacle, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration ordered Boeing to slow down production and ensure each plane was shipshape before delivery. Boeing was initially instructed to take its time and build no more than 38 of its 737 airliners per month, a limit later raised to 42 planes. The company is currently seeking permission to accelerate that rate to 47 planes per month, with plans to increase it to 52, and eventually 63, planes per month.

More planes produced should translate into more planes delivered -- and more cash collected on delivery. Analysts polled by S&P Global Market Intelligence forecast Boeing to generate more than $2.3 billion in free cash flow this year, growing to $6.2 billion in 2027, $9.8 billion in 2028, $13 billion in 2029, and $15 billion in 2030.

Yes, you read that right. Boeing's probably going to return to full-year positive FCF this year, grow that dramatically over the next five years, and even then still be growing free cash flow at a healthy 15% per year.

Assuming all goes as planned, Boeing is trading today at just 11 times its projected FCF five years from now.

What does Boeing need to do to make this happen? The good news here is that the issues that upset Boeing's apple cart last time around -- botched introduction of new products -- aren't likely to arise over the next five years, because Boeing doesn't plan to introduce any completely new "clean sheet" models during this period.

New variants of the 737 are undergoing flight tests and certification, however, as is a larger 777-9 airliner, and those have the potential to cause problems. But so long as Boeing keeps a tight focus on quality control, it should have a smooth flight from barely positive free cash flow today to massively profitable $15 billion annual FCF in 2030.

Key to this effort will be taking control over the company's Spirit Aerosystems subsidiary, its supplier of 737 fuselages -- and the company responsible for building the specific 737 that blew out over Oregon in 2024 -- and also turning that business profitable. As The Wall Street Journal reported last week, Boeing's $4.7 billion repurchase of Spirit last year actually cost Boeing closer to $10.3 billion once debt and obligations to perform "money pit" contracts are factored in.

This obstacle isn't insurmountable for a company that may soon make $15 billion a year in cash profit. More importantly, fixing Spirit's quality issues is key to Boeing being allowed to increase production to reach that $15 billion goal -- but it will be a near-term drag on financial results.

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What else Boeing needs to do And Boeing's to-do list doesn't end there; it doesn't end with the Commercial business.

As I pointed out last month, Boeing's defense business is once again profitable, and recently booked a major $131.2 billion contract to upgrade global F-15 fighter jet fleets. Once a headwind for Boeing, the defense business could now become a second tailwind as positive profit margins begin to turn a growing revenue stream into a second source of profit.

For this to play out perfectly, Boeing needs to avoid the temptation to underbid competitors to win big Pentagon projects, such as the 2011 KC-X Tanker project, which is still racking up losses to this day. Boeing should also probably abandon its ill-fated Starliner spacecraft program, which still isn't flying, and is looking increasingly obsolete as SpaceX works to make its Starship spacecraft operational.

So, what does Boeing need to do to ensure its turnaround sticks? Keep doing the things that make it money, and stop doing the things that lose it money. Ultimately, it's as simple as that.

Oracle has shed nearly a fifth of its value while its cloud peers climbed, and one Wall Street firm just slapped a price target on it that implies the stock needs to do something it has never done before.

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Oracle currently trades at $158.78, while the consensus Wall Street price target sits at $242.05. That leaves the stock trading roughly 52% below where the analyst community, on average, thinks it belongs.

Oracle (NYSE:ORCL | ORCL Price Prediction) is the enterprise database giant that has spent the last two years reinventing itself as an AI infrastructure builder. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure now sits inside Amazon, Microsoft, and Google data centers, and management has staked the company’s future on the same GPU buildout thesis powering the rest of the megacap tech complex.

The gap matters because the average target is only the floor of the bull case. Guggenheim’s John DiFucci carries a $400 price target and a Buy rating, which is currently the Street high. From here, that would mean the stock more than doubles.

A Cash-Flow Sticker Shock That Erased a Year of Gains The selloff has been driven by one number: capital spending. Oracle burned through $55.66 billion in capex in fiscal 2026 against $31.98 billion in operating cash flow, producing negative free cash flow of roughly $23.69 billion. Management then guided fiscal 2027 net cash capex to around $70 billion and said it plans to raise about $40 billion in debt and equity, including a $20 billion at-the-market equity issuance.

Investors sent the stock down 17.74% year to date and 27.98% over the past twelve months, even as the S&P 500 climbed 12.94% in 2026. Shares have traveled from a 52-week high of $341.82 to a low of $114.50, a peer-shaming drawdown driven almost entirely by fears that the AI capacity binge will compress margins and dilute shareholders before revenue catches up.

The damage is company-specific. Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet all posted double-digit cloud growth in the same window and their shares held up. Oracle stands alone as the hyperscaler-adjacent name Wall Street chose to punish.

Why the Sell-Side Is Doubling Down Instead of Downgrading Analysts are looking past the cash burn to a $638 billion remaining performance obligation, up 363% year over year. That backlog is the entire bull case in one number. Management reaffirmed a long-term outlook on the June call of a 31% revenue CAGR and 28% EPS CAGR through fiscal 2030, and CFO Hilary Maxson said steady-state return on invested capital for the GPU and CPU infrastructure business runs in the high 20s at the project level.

Coverage is heavily positive. Alpha Vantage’s tally shows 8 Strong Buy, 28 Buy, 7 Hold, and 1 Sell ratings, and the estimate revision trend has skewed upward with 21 upward EPS revisions against 12 downward for fiscal 2027 over the past 30 days. Fiscal 2027 revenue is guided to $90 billion, with non-GAAP EPS raised to $8.05.

Guggenheim’s $400 target is anchored on three pillars: OCI winning share as a lower-cost AI training and inference platform, the RPO backlog compounding through multi-cloud database partnerships with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, and a high-margin migration cycle as on-premise databases shift to Autonomous Cloud Database. The next test comes fast. Oracle reports Q1 fiscal 2027 on September 10, with cloud revenue guided to grow 58% to 64%.

Oracle Is the Cheap Name in a Fully Priced Cloud Cohort The peer group did not sell off with Oracle. Every direct comp is up in 2026, which sharpens the argument that Oracle is a story-specific dislocation.

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) trades at $499.70, up 3.98% year to date, against an average target of $572.92, implying roughly 15% upside. Coverage is nearly unanimous with 14 Strong Buy, 38 Buy, and 3 Hold calls, but the upside is a fraction of what analysts see in Oracle.

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) sits at $258.51, up 12% YTD, with a consensus target of $328.17 and implied upside of roughly 27%. Analyst posture skews strongly bullish at 15 Strong Buy, 44 Buy, and 2 Hold, and recent commentary has centered on AWS accelerating to 37% growth.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) trades at $338.46, up 8.34% YTD, against an average target of $428.07 for about 26% implied upside. Coverage runs 13 Strong Buy, 45 Buy, and 5 Hold, with Google Cloud’s 82% growth rate anchoring the case.

The largest implied upside in the group sits with Oracle by a wide margin. Even the average target represents a 52% move, and Guggenheim’s $400 print stands at roughly 152% upside. No hyperscaler peer offers a comparable dislocation.

Data Points That Frame the Setup Oracle trades at $158.78 with a consensus target of $242.05, drawn from 42 analysts covering the name. Implied upside to consensus is roughly 52%. The stock’s 17.74% year-to-date decline compares to a 12.94% gain for the S&P 500 through the same period, a spread of more than 30 percentage points.

Forward multiples reflect the reset. Oracle trades at roughly 19 times forward earnings against fiscal 2027 EPS guidance of $8.05. The 50-day moving average sits at $139.84, meaning the recent bounce has carried shares above short-term trend but well below the 200-day at $168.78. Shares climbed 9.97% over the past month as buyers began stepping back in ahead of the September 10 earnings report.

Where I Actually Come Down on Oracle Here The constructive case rests on the RPO backlog converting on schedule and the September 10 earnings report validating the 27% to 29% Q1 revenue guide. The path back to $242 is straightforward if cloud growth prints in the guided 58% to 64% band, capex stays disciplined, and the FY27 EPS number of $8.05 holds. Guggenheim’s $400 requires more, specifically OCI taking real share from AWS and Azure while the Autonomous Database migration cycle compounds.

The bear case sharpens if the $40 billion in planned debt and equity raises turns into meaningfully more dilution, if GPU sourcing costs squeeze the 30% to 40% OCI margin profile management has advertised, or if a handful of AI contracts fail to convert into recurring revenue at the pace RPO implies. Free cash flow at negative $23.69 billion leaves no cushion.

My lean is constructive. The consensus 52% upside is too wide to ignore in a cloud cohort that remains fully priced, and the estimate revision trend is quietly moving the right way. Guggenheim’s double is a stretch that requires everything to break correctly, but the base case at $242 does not.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Papua New Guinea: TotalEnergies Takes Decisive Steps Towards Final Investment Decision on Papua LNG TotalEnergies (Paris:TTE) LSE:TTE NYSE:TTE announces that Papua LNG has achieved major contractual and commercial milestones, marking decisive steps towards a Final Investment Decision. Thanks to the close cooperation with the authorities of Papua New Guinea and Papua LNG partners, the following key milestones have now been achieved:

Completion of the EPC tendering process, with contract award recommendations now readyto be approved by the co-venturers. Since 2024, close to US$ 4 billion cost savings have been achieved through project design optimization (for example, developing an alternative upstream condensate scheme in synergy with PNG LNG) and rebidding EPC packages with an enlarged panel of Asian EPC contractors, bringing the project capital expenditure down to around US$ 14 billion.Decision made to maximize synergies for the benefit of the project by transferring the operatorship to ExxonMobil, operator of PNG LNG. TotalEnergies and ExxonMobil will ensure a safe and efficient transition of operatorship while maintaining continuity of project activities and ongoing commitments to the authorities and stakeholders. Together with the transfer of operatorship, in order to give to ExxonMobil a higher stake in the project, TotalEnergies will sell a 9.1% interest (post back-in of Kumul Petroleum) in the project to its Papua LNG partners, in proportion to their existing participating interests and will retain a 20% interest in the project, while maintaining its LNG offtake share of the project.Finalization of the Gas Agreement with the Government of Papua New Guinea taking into account this updated budget and optimization. The Gas Agreement signed in 2019 has been amended to ensure robust project economics, including in low cycle, while preserving the State’s long-term fiscal interests.Establishment of a LNG marketing joint venture between TotalEnergies and the PNG State-related entities represented by Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited, to jointly commercialize 2.4 Mtpa from Papua LNG out of a total production of 5.6 Mtpa, thus supporting the project financing.Execution of a LNG offtake Heads of Agreement between TotalEnergies as a buyer and the parties of the LNG marketing joint venture as sellers, providing TotalEnergies with access to 1.5 Mtpa of LNG for its own global portfolio.“These agreements mark decisive step towards the Final Investment Decision of Papua LNG. The transfer of operatorship enhances the project's value creation and competitiveness by leveraging the synergies with PNG LNG during construction and operations phases. Papua LNG will enable the Company to secure significant LNG volumes, strategically located to support energy supply diversification across fast-growing Asian markets,” said Patrick Pouyanné, Chairman and CEO of TotalEnergies. “I want to thank the Government of Papua New Guinea, led by Prime Minister James Marape, for its continuous support, instrumental in achieving these major milestones.”

Upon completion of the farm-down by TotalEnergies of part of its interest and exercise by the State of Papua New Guinea of its back-in right, TotalEnergies will hold a 20% interest in Papua LNG, alongside ExxonMobil (34.1%, operator), Santos (21.0%), ENEOS Xplora (2.4%), and Kumul Petroleum Holdings Limited and MRDC (22.5%).

About Papua LNG

Papua LNG is a natural gas production and liquefaction project located in Papua New Guinea that will monetize the gas resources of the Elk and Antelope fields in the Gulf Province.

The project is designed to produce 5.6 Mtpa of liquefied natural gas (LNG), primarily for Asian markets. Its development includes gas processing facilities, a pipeline connecting the fields to the liquefaction site and LNG infrastructure located near Port Moresby.

The project is now approaching the Final Investment Decision (FID). Papua LNG is expected to contribute to Papua New Guinea’s economic development by creating employment and local business opportunities, developing national skills and capabilities and supporting the growth of the country’s gas industry, while complying with applicable international environmental and social standards.

***

About TotalEnergies

TotalEnergies is a global integrated multi-energy company that produces and markets energies: oil and biofuels, natural gas, biogas and low-carbon hydrogen, renewables and electricity. Our more than 100,000 employees are committed to providing as many people as possible with energy that is more affordable, more available and more sustainable. Present in around 120 countries, TotalEnergies places sustainable development at the heart of its strategy, its projects and its operations.

@TotalEnergiesTotalEnergiesTotalEnergiesTotalEnergies

Cautionary Note

The terms “TotalEnergies”, “TotalEnergies company” or “Company” in this document are used to designate TotalEnergies SE and the consolidated entities that are directly or indirectly controlled by TotalEnergies SE. Likewise, the words “we”, “us” and “our” may also be used to refer to these entities or to their employees. The entities in which TotalEnergies SE directly or indirectly owns a shareholding are separate legal entities. This document may contain forward-looking information and statements that are based on a number of economic data and assumptions made in a given economic, competitive and regulatory environment. They may prove to be inaccurate in the future and are subject to a number of risk factors. Neither TotalEnergies SE nor any of its subsidiaries assumes any obligation to update publicly any forward-looking information or statement, objectives or trends contained in this document whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Information concerning risk factors, that may affect TotalEnergies’ financial results or activities is provided in the most recent Universal Registration Document, the French-language version of which is filed by TotalEnergies SE with the French securities regulator Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), and in the Form 20-F filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260906488108/en/

Disclosures I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and have no plans to buy any new positions in the stocks mentioned within the next 72 hours.

Click for the complete disclosure

The USD/JPY and DXY charts are approaching defining support levels, creating a conflict between short-term weakness, long-term bullish continuation risks, and the risk of a broader structural bearish shift.

Several factors are contributing to volatility risks across both charts:

Rising U.S. Treasury yields: The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield recently reached a new 2026 high near 4.8%, widening the interest-rate differential between the United States and Japan 
Bank of Japan rate-hike expectations: Markets are pricing in the possibility of a 25-basis-point rate hike at the BOJ meeting scheduled for September 17–18. This expectation is providing short-term support for the yen.
Crude oil and geopolitical risks: Crude oil prices have broken above a 7-month resistance level, increasing concerns about supply disruptions and inflation. This could support the dollar through safe-haven demand, although persistently higher oil prices could also raise concerns about global growth.
As of September 7, the fundamental and technical picture remains tilted towards geopolitical risks. Short-term dollar weakness is visible, but the broader risk narrative continues to support the possibility of renewed dollar strength if inflation, yields, and geopolitical tensions remain elevated.

DXY Price Outlook: Monthly Time Frame — Log Scale

Source: TradingView

Despite the DXY breaking below its 2026 uptrend, signaling short-term weakness, the longer-term structure remains tilted to the upside.

The key downside levels I am watching align with the Fibonacci retracement levels of the 2026 uptrend: 98.50, 98, 97 and 95.50. The 95.50 area is the defining barrier between a structural breakdown of the 18-year uptrend and a potential continuation of the longer-term bullish structure.

On the upside, reclaiming the 2026 uptrend near 100.30, followed by a move above 101 and 101.70, would restore the dollar’s strength against major markets. Such a move could lift the DXY toward new 2026 highs and add further pressure on Japanese officials facing persistent yen weakness.

This situation could become more critical if the interest-rate differential between the United States and Japan continues to widen.

Key DXY Scenarios
Bullish scenario: A recovery above 100.30, followed by a breakout above 101 and 101.70, would signal renewed dollar strength and support a move toward new yearly highs.

Bearish scenario: A sustained breakdown below 98.50 and 98 would increase the risk of a deeper correction toward 97 and 95.50. A clear break below 95.50 would confirm a more significant structural shift and challenge the long-term bullish trend.

USD/JPY Price Outlook: Weekly Time Frame — Log Scale

Source: TradingView

Technically, USD/JPY is breaking below a 3-month support level, signaling short-term yen strength while simultaneously approaching an uptrend support zone that has been in place since 2023.

Key Patterns and Scenarios in Focus
The breakdown below the April 2025–July 2026 channel points to short-term weakness and aligns with the Fibonacci retracement levels of that advance.

Price action is currently testing a breakdown below 154.80, the 38.2% retracement level. A sustained move below this level could target 152, corresponding to the 50% retracement, followed by 149 near the 61.8% retracement level.

The 149 area could become an important zone for a potential long-term rebound, aligning with the golden ratio, the broader 2023–2026 uptrend and increasingly oversold momentum conditions.

Bearish scenario: A clear breakdown below 149 would confirm broader structural weakness and increase the risk of a deeper correction in USD/JPY.

Bullish scenario: Holding above 149 would preserve the broader bullish structure. On the upside, reclaiming the 2026 uptrend boundaries near 158.40, 161 and 164 would restore USD/JPY strength and expose the upper channel boundary near 170.

Short-term weakness, the potential for long-term dollar strength and persistent geopolitical risks are shaping the outlook for USD/JPY and the DXY.

The next major catalysts include the U.S. CPI report on Friday, the BOJ meeting on September 17–18 and the FOMC meeting on September 16. The reaction in Treasury yields and the direction of crude oil prices will remain critical in determining whether the current weakness develops into a deeper structural decline or becomes another correction within a broader bullish trend.

Written by Razan Hilal, CMT

Follow on X: @Rh_waves

Billionaire Bill Ackman runs Pershing Square, one of the 20 most successful hedge funds in the world as measured by net gains since inception, according to LCH Investments. That makes him a good source of inspiration for individual investors

Ackman made a number of trades in the second quarter, but the two listed below warrant closer inspection:

Ackman sold his stake in Alphabet (GOOGL -1.11%) (GOOG -1.05%), an AI stock up 100% in 18 months.Ackman started a position in Netflix (NFLX -5.35%), a mega-cap stock down 42% from its record high.Here's what investors should know about Alphabet and Netflix.

Bill Ackman speaks at an event for the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance. Image source: Getty Images.

Alphabet reported strong financial results in the second quarter despite missing estimates on the bottom line. Revenue rose 24% to $120 billion, marking the 12th consecutive quarter of double-digit  growth. Meanwhile, GAAP operating income (which eliminates unrealized gains from its investment in SpaceX) increased 31% to $41 billion.

Alphabet is primarily a digital advertising company supported by a plethora of popular web properties, such as Google Search and YouTube. Advertising products and services still account for more than two-thirds of total revenue, but cloud computing has become an increasingly consequential part of the big picture.

Google Cloud revenue rose 82% in the second quarter, the fifth consecutive acceleration, driven by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. For the first time, the company earned revenue by selling custom AI accelerators called tensor processing units (TPUs) to external customers, representing an attempt to compete more directly with the market leader Nvidia.

Meanwhile, CEO Sundar Pichai said Gemini APIs (i.e., interfaces that let outside companies integrate Gemini models into their own applications) now process about 22 billion tokens per minute, up from 16 billion one quarter earlier. Pichai also said 90% of Fortune 100 companies use Gemini Enterprise, an AI platform for business work.

In total, Google gained two percentage points of market share in cloud infrastructure and platform services in the past year, and custom chips and proprietary models could certainly drive further share gains in the future. Google Cloud is running circles around its two largest rivals, Amazon and Microsoft, which reported cloud revenue growth of 37% and 43%, respectively, in the most recent quarter.

So, why did Bill Ackman sell his shares? While Alphabet is well-positioned for long-term growth, it faces near-term headwinds related to AI infrastructure spending. In the second quarter, Alphabet reported negative free cash flow for the first time as a public company. It also raised its 2026 capex guidance to $200 billion, up from $91 billion last year.

Negative free cash flow could make the stock volatile as bulls and bears squabble about whether the company is spending too much money on AI infrastructure. Indeed, the stock fell sharply following the second-quarter earnings report, and still trades 2% below the pre-report level as of Sept. 4.

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Netflix: The stock Bill Ackman boughtThe streaming industry has become much more crowded over the last decade, but Netflix is still the dominant player by virtually every important metric. It has more monthly active users, generates more revenue, boasts better retention rates, and accounts for a larger percentage of TV viewing time than any other subscription streaming service.

In turn, Netflix has a data advantage. With deep insight into viewing behavior, the company has an edge when personalizing content and making production decisions. Indeed, Netflix consistently produces more engaging content than its rivals. Among the 10 most-watched original streaming series and movies in the final week of August, Netflix made four of the series and six of the movies.

Netflix is down 42% from its high in June 2025, primarily because the market is worried about the company's growth prospects after it failed to win bidding wars for Warner Bros. Discovery and Roku. However, I think the market is underestimating Netflix. The company has pricing power in the streaming space, a market forecast to grow at 10% annually through 2030, and it has largely untapped opportunities in advertising, live sports, and theatrical releases.

Wall Street estimates Netflix's earnings will increase at 21% annually over the next three years. That makes the current valuation of 24.7 times earnings look cheap. Indeed, most analysts view the stock as undervalued. Netflix has a median target price of $94 per share, which implies 20% upside from the current share price of $78. Patient investors should feel comfortable buying a small position today.

TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 07, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE and TASE: TEVA) (“Teva”) announced today its intention to issue senior notes through its special purpose finance subsidiaries. Teva Pharmaceutical Finance Netherlands II B.V. (“Teva Finance II”) intends to offer EUR-denominated Senior Notes (the “Euro Notes”) and Teva Pharmaceutical Finance Netherlands III B.V. (“Teva Finance III”) and Teva Pharmaceutical Finance Netherlands IV B.V. (“Teva Finance IV” and, together with Teva Finance II and Teva Finance III, the “Issuers”) intend to offer USD-denominated Senior Notes (the “USD Notes” and, together with the Euro Notes, the “Notes”).

The offering of Notes is subject to, among other things, market conditions. Teva expects to use the net proceeds from the offering, together with cash on hand, (i) to fund the redemptions of certain existing notes as further set out below (the “Conditional Redemptions”), (ii) to pay fees and expenses in connection therewith and (iii) to the extent of any remaining proceeds, for general corporate purposes, including the repayment of outstanding debt upon maturity, tender offer or earlier redemption.

In connection with the Conditional Redemptions, Teva intends to issue notices of conditional redemption pursuant to which it intends to redeem in accordance with the terms set forth in the relevant indentures: (i) all of the 6.750% Senior Notes due 2028 that are outstanding, (ii) all of the 7.875% Sustainability-Linked Senior Notes due 2029 that are outstanding, (iii) all of the 7.375% Sustainability-Linked Senior Notes due 2029 that are outstanding, (iv) up to $450,000,000 in principal amount of 4.750% Sustainability-Linked Senior Notes due 2027 and (v) up to €1,250,000,000 in principal amount of 4.375% Sustainability-Linked Senior Notes due 2030. The Conditional Redemptions are expected to be conditioned on the consummation of the offering. The offering, however, is not conditioned on the Conditional Redemptions. Teva may, in its sole discretion, decide to issue additional notices of conditional redemption and redeem certain of its other outstanding notes, or to amend the principal amounts to be redeemed under any of the foregoing notices, in each case in accordance with the terms set forth in the relevant indentures pursuant to which such notes were issued, although it is under no obligation to do so.

Net proceeds may be temporarily invested pending application for their stated purpose.

The Notes will be unsecured senior obligations of the Issuers and will be unconditionally guaranteed on a senior basis by Teva.

The offering and sale of the Notes will be made pursuant to our effective automatic shelf registration statement on Form S-3, including our base prospectus, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) on February 7, 2025. The offering of these Notes will be made only by means of a prospectus supplement and accompanying base prospectus, which have been filed with the SEC. Before you invest, you should read the prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus along with other documents that Teva has filed with the SEC and that are incorporated by reference into the prospectus supplement and accompanying base prospectus for more complete information about Teva and this offering. These documents are available at no charge by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at http://www.sec.gov. Alternatively, a copy of the prospectus supplement and accompanying base prospectus related to this offering may be obtained, when available, by contacting BNP PARIBAS, 16, boulevard des Italiens, 75009 Paris, France, Attention: Fixed Income Syndicate (emails: [email protected]); BNP Paribas Securities Corp., 787 Seventh Avenue, New York, New York 10019, United States of America, Attention: Debt Syndicate Desk (email: [email protected]); Citigroup Global Markets Europe AG or Citigroup Global Markets Inc., c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, New York 11717, United States of America, Telephone: (800) 831-9146, E-mail: [email protected]; Goldman Sachs Bank Europe SE, Marienturm, Taunusanlage 9-10, 60329 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Attention: High Yield Syndicate Desk (Tel: +49 69 7532 1000, Fax: +44 (0)207 774 2330); J.P. Morgan SE, Taunustor 1 (TaunusTurm), 60310 Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Attention: Head of EMEA Capital Markets Group (email: [email protected]) and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, 270 Park Avenue, New York, New York 10017, United States of America, Attention: Investment Grade Syndicate Desk, Tel: (212) 834-6081).

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction.

About Teva

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (NYSE and TASE: TEVA) is transforming into a leading innovative biopharmaceutical company, enabled by a world-class generics business. For over 120 years, Teva’s commitment to bettering health has never wavered. From innovating in the fields of neuroscience and immunology to providing complex generic medicines, biosimilars and pharmacy brands worldwide, Teva is dedicated to addressing patients’ needs, now and in the future. At Teva, We Are All In For Better Health.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which are based on management’s current beliefs and expectations and are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties, both known and unknown, that could cause our future results, performance or achievements to differ significantly from that expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Important factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include risks relating to: completion of the offering of senior notes and conditional redemptions for certain outstanding notes; our significant indebtedness, which may limit our ability to incur additional indebtedness, engage in additional transactions or make new investments; and our potential need to raise additional funds in the future, which may not be available on acceptable terms or at all; other financial and economic risks; and other factors discussed in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the second quarter of 2026, in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2025, including in the sections captioned “Risk Factors” and “Forward Looking Statements,” and other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available at www.sec.gov. Forward-looking statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and we assume no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements or other information contained herein, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. You are cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements.

It may be unlawful to distribute this press release in certain jurisdictions. This press release is not for distribution in Canada, Japan or Australia. The information in this press release does not constitute an offer of securities for sale in Canada, Japan or Australia.

The Notes are not intended to be offered, sold or otherwise made available to and should not be offered, sold or otherwise made available to any retail investor in the European Economic Area (“EEA”). For these purposes, a retail investor means a person who is one (or more) of: (i) a retail client as defined in point (11) of Article 4(1) of Directive 2014/65/EU (as amended, “MiFID II”); or (ii) a customer within the meaning of Directive 2016/97/EU (as amended, the “Insurance Distribution Directive”), where that customer would not qualify as a professional client as defined in point (10) of Article 4(1) of MiFID II; or (iii) not a qualified investor as defined in Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129. Consequently, no key information document required by Regulation (EU) No 1286/2014 (as amended, the “PRIIPs Regulation”) for offering or selling the Notes or otherwise making them available to retail investors in the EEA has been prepared and therefore offering or selling the Notes or otherwise making them available to any retail investor in the EEA may be unlawful under the PRIIPs Regulation.

The Notes are not intended to be offered, sold or otherwise made available to and should not be offered, sold or otherwise made available to any retail investors in the United Kingdom. For these purposes, a retail investor means a person who is neither: (i) a professional client, as defined in point (8) of the UK MiFIR; nor (ii) a qualified investor as defined in paragraph 15 of Schedule 1 to the POATRs. Consequently, no disclosure document required by DISC for offering or selling, or distributing the Notes or otherwise making them available to retail investors in the UK has been prepared and, therefore, offering or selling, or distributing the notes or otherwise making them available to any retail investor in the UK may be unlawful under the DISC and the Consumer Composite Investments (Designated Activities) Regulations 2024.

Promotion of the Notes in the United Kingdom is restricted by the FSMA, and accordingly, the Notes are not being promoted to the general public in the United Kingdom. This announcement is for distribution only to, and is only directed at, persons who are (i) outside the United Kingdom, (ii) investment professionals falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005 (the “Order”), (iii) high net worth entities, and other persons to whom they may lawfully be communicated, falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the Order or (iv) persons to whom an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity (within the meaning of section 21 of the FSMA) in connection with the issue or sale of any notes may otherwise lawfully be communicated or caused to be communicated (all such persons together being referred to as “relevant persons”). The Notes will only be available to, and any invitation, offer or agreement to subscribe, purchase or otherwise acquire such Notes will be engaged in only with, relevant persons. This announcement is directed only at relevant persons and must not be acted on or relied on by anyone who is not a relevant person.

The Notes have not, may not and will not be offered, sold or delivered in the Netherlands, other than to qualified investors (as defined in Regulation (EU) 2017/1129).

The Notes have not, may not and will not be offered, sold or delivered in Israel, other than to persons who qualify as one of the types of investors listed in the First Addendum to the Israeli Securities Law, subject to and in accordance with the requirements set forth in the First Addendum to the Israeli Securities Law.

Teva Media Inquiries:
[email protected]

Teva Investor Relations Inquiries:
[email protected]

Source: Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says OpenAI’s Astra marks the arrival of artificial general intelligence, but for investors the message is about hardware.

Huang said Astra was trained on more than 100,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell systems and that another 400,000 GPUs are coming online.

Whether Astra truly qualifies as AGI remains disputed, with researcher Gary Marcus arguing that Astra falls short of conventional benchmarks.

The investment takeaway is clear. If frontier AI systems perform more economically useful work, the infrastructure required to train and run them could keep expanding.

Nvidia stock remains the clearest compute winnerNvidia is the most direct beneficiary because Astra demonstrates how much frontier AI still depends on its hardware.

The company reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of $96.2 billion, up 106% from a year earlier, while Data Center revenue reached $89 billion, up 117%. Nvidia guided for $108 billion of revenue in the current quarter.

TD Cowen analyst Joshua Buchalter described the shares as “materially undervalued” after the results, according to MarketWatch.

He argued that customer demand could support revenue approaching twice current levels if supply constraints were removed.

That backdrop makes Astra relevant beyond another model launch.

OpenAI has shown that training its newest system required a six-figure Nvidia deployment, while Huang’s comments suggest another expansion is planned.

Nvidia’s Vera Rubin generation is moving into production, extending the hardware roadmap beyond Blackwell.

The next AI buildout will not run on Nvidia GPUs alone.

Hyperscalers and AI labs are developing custom accelerators to reduce inference costs and optimise specific workloads. Broadcom has become a beneficiary of that shift.

Its third-quarter AI semiconductor revenue jumped 221% to $16.7 billion, with management expecting $21.7 billion in the fourth quarter.

Broadcom is also working with OpenAI on Jalapeño, its first custom intelligence processor, and future generations.

Macquarie analyst Arthur Lai upgraded Broadcom to Outperform and raised his target to $490 after the results.

Lai believes Broadcom “dominates the rapid-growth AI ASIC market,” supported by its custom-silicon and connectivity advantages.

OpenAI is expected to become Broadcom’s second-largest XPU customer in fiscal 2028, when management sees more than five gigawatts of OpenAI accelerators being deployed.

That makes Broadcom another way to play Astra: smarter models can increase demand for specialised compute and the networking connecting AI clusters.

Oracle takes the thesis beyond chips and into data-centre capacity.

The company is a major cloud partner to OpenAI, and its shares rose following Astra’s release ahead of September 10 earnings.

Bank of America analyst Tal Liani maintained a Buy rating and $240 target. TipRanks said BofA expects Oracle infrastructure-as-a-service revenue to jump 116% year on year as one gigawatt of new data-centre capacity comes online.

Oracle’s $638 billion backlog gives the company visibility, but the opportunity is expensive. BofA expects around $92.5 billion of fiscal-year capital expenditure, which could pressure free cash flow.

That makes Oracle the riskiest of the three. AI demand can produce extraordinary cloud growth, but Oracle must finance the physical infrastructure before much of that revenue arrives.

Robinhood Markets stock NASDAQ:HOOD ended Friday at $122.11, capping a volatile week in which Wall Street became markedly more bullish on the brokerage just as its valuation became harder to ignore.

Morgan Stanley upgraded Robinhood to Overweight from Equal Weight and raised its price target to $150 from $124.

Piper Sandler lifted its target to $145, while Scotiabank began coverage with an Outperform rating and $136 target.

The enthusiasm helped drive a 16.6% Thursday surge to $124.72 before the stock slipped 2.1% on Friday. After that rally, Robinhood was already trading around the prevailing analyst consensus target.

Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys argues Robinhood is becoming less dependent on speculative trading cycles.

Cyprys said there is “increasing evidence” that Robinhood’s expanding product set is improving the economics of its existing customer base.

The company now has 13 businesses generating more than $100 million in annualised revenue.

Morgan Stanley expects revenue to compound at roughly 23% through 2028 to $8 billion and raised its 2026 to 2028 earnings estimates by 12% to 15%.

Scotiabank’s Lance Jessurun made a related argument.

TipRanks reported that he believes investors still value Robinhood too much like a cyclical retail broker, overlooking revenue from subscriptions, interest income, clearing economics and international crypto infrastructure.

That is the bullish case, as Robinhood can grow by monetising the customers it already has rather than waiting for another trading frenzy.

The valuation problem is that investors are increasingly paying for that transformation before it is fully proven.

Prediction markets are the clearest example of both the upside and the uncertainty.

Robinhood generated $156 million of event-contract revenue in the second quarter as total quarterly revenue rose 32% to a record $1.31 billion.

Piper Sandler analyst Patrick Moley expects prediction-market revenue to reach roughly $320 million across the third and fourth quarters, helped by NFL and college football activity.

That growth is helping justify higher price targets, but regulation remains unsettled.

On August 28, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a ruling denying Robinhood preliminary relief against Nevada regulators and rejected arguments that sports-event contracts were beyond state gaming oversight.

The decision also addressed related cases involving Kalshi and Crypto.com.

That does not invalidate Robinhood’s prediction-market business, but it shows that one of the company’s fastest-growing revenue lines can still generate legal and regulatory volatility.

Robinhood’s latest operating data also give investors reasons to stay selective.

Funded customers reached 28.5 million in July, but total platform assets fell 4% from June. Equity trading volume declined 15% month over month, crypto volume dropped 33% and event-contract volume slipped 5%, although event activity remained about 20 times higher than a year earlier.

Wall Street is also far from unanimous.

Rothschild and Co Redburn kept a Sell rating in August and raised its target only slightly to $80, leaving a striking gap with Morgan Stanley’s $150 forecast.

That divergence captures the debate surrounding Robinhood after its latest rally.

Morgan Stanley may be identifying a company that has successfully evolved from a trading app into a diversified financial platform.

But the stock’s move above roughly $122 means investors are increasingly being asked to pay today for growth that still needs to arrive.

Key Points Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis cautions that missing this Congressional window on the CLARITY Act means waiting until 2030 for crypto market structure rules The legislation cleared the House in July 2025 but has remained gridlocked in the Senate for more than twelve months September 15 marks a crucial procedural vote, though observers doubt final approval before November’s midterm elections Ethics requirements pushed by Democratic lawmakers continue to block progress Bitcoin hovered near $79,000 while the Crypto Fear and Greed Index registered 75, signaling “greed” sentiment Wyoming’s Senator Cynthia Lummis is intensifying pressure on the Senate to advance the CLARITY Act, cautioning that inaction now threatens to freeze crypto regulation efforts for the remainder of the decade.

If the Clarity Act doesn’t pass this Congress, the next real opportunity to bring market structure legislation back up is 2030. That’s years of jobs, investment, and tax revenue we can avoid squandering if we finish this now.

— Senator Cynthia Lummis (@SenLummis) September 6, 2026

In a September 6 statement on X, Lummis emphasized that failing to move the CLARITY Act through the current Congressional session pushes the next viable opportunity for comprehensive market structure legislation all the way to 2030.

“By completing work on this legislation immediately, we prevent the loss of countless opportunities—jobs, investment capital, and government revenue,” Lummis stated.

Understanding the CLARITY Act’s Framework The CLARITY Act aims to eliminate regulatory ambiguity surrounding digital assets across the United States. The legislation establishes clear criteria for determining whether a digital asset qualifies as a security or commodity, while delineating jurisdictional boundaries between the SEC and CFTC for overseeing various asset categories.

Senator Lummis: Failure to Pass the CLARITY Act This Congress Could Delay the Next Opportunity Until 2030

U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis said that if the CLARITY Act does not pass during the current Congress, the next real opportunity to advance market structure legislation may not… pic.twitter.com/jmZzheLTZz

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 7, 2026

After securing House approval in July 2025, the legislation has languished in the Senate chamber for over twelve months without reaching a final floor vote.

The Senate calendar includes a procedural motion scheduled for September 15. However, this vote serves merely to determine whether deliberations can conclude and legislative proceedings can advance—it does not constitute final passage.

Republican Representative French Hill recently acknowledged that “negotiations have progressed to a meaningful stage,” though market watchers identify persistent roadblocks.

Remaining Legislative Roadblocks Democratic lawmakers continue insisting on the incorporation of ethics-related provisions as a prerequisite for their backing. These stipulations remain unresolved.

According to CoinDesk reporting, securing final passage ahead of November’s midterm elections appears virtually impossible. House leadership intends to schedule its concluding vote immediately following Senate action, just days before voters head to the polls.

Congressional terms operate on two-year intervals. Should the legislation fail to advance during the current session, it must be resubmitted entirely in the subsequent Congress, starting the process anew.

Lummis stands among the Senate’s strongest cryptocurrency advocates, having previously championed proposals to incorporate Bitcoin into America’s strategic reserve holdings.

Certain market observers contend that even with legislative postponement, near-term market consequences may prove minimal. Institutional investment has maintained momentum following spot Bitcoin ETF authorizations, while stablecoin regulatory frameworks progress through independent channels.

Current Cryptocurrency Market Conditions Bitcoin was changing hands near $79,000 on September 7, showing a modest 0.03% decline across 24 hours while posting 3.01% gains for the week.

Ethereum traded at $2,506, reflecting a 0.39% increase. Ripple sat at $1.41, experiencing a 0.47% decrease.

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index registered 75, firmly within “greed” parameters.

South Korean Bitcoin exchanges maintained a 1.48% premium, indicating slightly elevated prices compared to worldwide trading platforms.

One billion tokens hit the open market on September 1. Instead of dumping, XRP rallied. The monthly escrow release that once spooked retail traders has become background noise for an asset that just logged its strongest on-chain quarter in years.

Summary

Ripple released 1 billion XRP (worth roughly $1.38 billion) from escrow on September 1, 2026, reducing locked supply to 31.28 billion tokens. XRP climbed 28.5% in August, its best August since 2021, touching $1.70 before settling near $1.42, absorbing the escrow release without flinching. Payment volume on the XRP Ledger surged 521% in a single week in late August, driven by larger institutional-scale transfers rather than retail activity. Spot XRP ETFs, approved in March 2026, pulled in $153.55 million in August alone, with $150.28 million arriving in the final two weeks. RLUSD, Ripple’s stablecoin, crossed $2.32 billion in market cap, cementing its position as the dominant stablecoin on XRPL and a growing force on Ethereum. For eight years, Ripple’s monthly escrow unlock has played out like clockwork. On the first day of every month, the XRP Ledger’s built-in escrow contracts release up to 1 billion XRP into Ripple-controlled wallets. Each time, a wave of anxious posts floods social media. Each time, traders brace for a dump that rarely arrives. And each time, the market moves on.

September 1, 2026, was no different in mechanics. Whale Alert flagged three transactions: 500 million, 400 million, and 100 million XRP, all released from escrow within minutes. The total haul was worth about $1.38 billion at the time. What was different, though, was everything around it.

XRP had just posted its best August in five years. Active addresses on the ledger were at all-time highs. Spot ETFs were pulling in nine-figure inflows. Ripple, freed from its four-year SEC battle, was signing deals with names like Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan. The billion-token release landed in a market that was not scared of it anymore, and for good reason.

This is the story of how the scariest thing about XRP became one of the least interesting.

The anatomy of a billion-token unlock The escrow program dates back to December 2017, when Ripple locked 55 billion XRP into time-based contracts on the XRP Ledger. The idea was straightforward: remove the supply overhang that critics used to argue XRP was centrally controlled. The protocol would release up to 1 billion tokens on the first of each month, and anything Ripple did not sell would go back into escrow at the end of the queue.

Nine years later, the program has released tens of billions of XRP. Ripple’s escrow balance has dropped from 55 billion to 31.28 billion as of the September release, according to crypto.news data on XRPL escrow mechanics. But the net effect on circulating supply has been modest. Ripple typically re-escrows 700 to 900 million XRP each month, leaving only 100 to 300 million for operational use, OTC liquidity deals, or institutional payments.

The math is simple. A billion tokens sound alarming. But when 70 to 90 percent go right back into lockup, the actual supply entering the market is a fraction of the headline number. Historical data backs this up: monthly escrow releases have produced average 7-day price swings of negative 3.1% to positive 1.7%, with 30-day volume bumps of 15 to 22 percent. Not nothing, but not the catastrophic sell events that early critics predicted.

Compare that to traditional equity markets. When a public company’s lockup period expires and insiders can sell, the stock often drops 5 to 15 percent in a single session. XRP’s monthly unlock is milder than a typical IPO lockup expiry. The difference is predictability. Everyone knows when the tokens are coming. Everyone knows how many. And everyone knows Ripple’s historical re-escrow behavior. There is no information asymmetry, which means there is no panic.

What changed in 2025 and 2026 is the market’s understanding of this pattern. Early on, every unlock triggered panic selling by traders who saw a billion-token dump incoming. Now the unlock is priced in, discussed in advance, and absorbed within hours. The September release barely moved the needle. XRP was trading at $1.38 when the tokens unlocked and was at $1.42 five days later.

August’s 28% rally and what powered it To understand why the escrow release landed softly, you need to understand what August looked like for XRP.

The token entered August near $1.10, having spent most of the summer in a grinding consolidation. By mid-August, something shifted. Whale accumulation picked up sharply. Spot ETF inflows, which had been trickling in since the March 2026 approvals, turned into a firehose. And on-chain metrics started flashing signals that had not appeared since the post-settlement euphoria of late 2025.

By August 28, XRP had touched $1.70, a 28.5% gain for the month and its strongest August performance since 2021. Nearly all the momentum arrived in the final two weeks, coinciding with $150.28 million in ETF inflows during that stretch. The total August ETF inflow figure hit $153.55 million, meaning the first half of the month contributed less than $4 million.

The pattern suggests institutional buyers, not retail speculators, drove the move. Retail volume on major exchanges actually declined slightly during the rally. The money came from funds, from ETF creation baskets, and from OTC desks serving institutional clients. That is a fundamentally different kind of buying pressure than the speculative waves that defined previous XRP rallies.

As of September 6, XRP sits near $1.42. It gave back some of the August gains, which is consistent with a historical pattern: in seven of the last eight years, XRP’s September has moved in the opposite direction of its August. Both times August rose, September fell, dropping 14% in 2020 and 19.6% in 2021. Whether that pattern holds this time depends on factors that previous Septembers did not have, including spot ETFs, institutional pipelines, and a Fed meeting on September 15 and 16 with fresh projections.

There is a reasonable argument that the seasonal pattern breaks this year. In 2020 and 2021, XRP had no ETFs, no regulatory clarity, and an active SEC lawsuit hanging over it. The buyers were almost entirely retail. This time, the August rally was driven by ETF creation baskets and OTC institutional flows. That type of capital does not rotate out on a monthly candlestick pattern. It stays because it was allocated with a multi-quarter or multi-year time horizon. The seasonal bears might be right on a short-term pullback, but calling for a 15 to 20 percent September decline requires ignoring every structural change that has happened in the past 12 months.

The 521% payment volume spike, explained On August 26, the XRP Ledger recorded a payment volume surge that grabbed headlines: a 521.1% increase, pushing daily payment volume to roughly 488.4 million XRP. Numbers like that sound transformative. The reality is more nuanced, but still meaningful.

The number of individual payment transactions actually fell 10.5% that day, to around 388,900. What spiked was the size of each transaction. Fewer payments, but each one carrying dramatically more value. This points to institutional or enterprise-scale activity: treasury movements, cross-border settlement batches, or large OTC transfers.

Crypto.news reported that XRP had its best month since the SEC settlement, and the on-chain data supports that framing. Active addresses on the XRP Ledger hit 2.26 million in August, more than double July’s 1.02 million. The 7-day moving average for daily active addresses reached 1.34 million, a new all-time high, surpassing the previous record of 1.22 million set in March 2025.

JUST IN: Ripple Prime expands HyperLiquid integration with HIP-3 symbols, institutions now get onchain perps for gold, silver & oil pic.twitter.com/bH77x5ClGu

— crypto.news (@cryptodotnews) March 31, 2026 Total value locked on the XRP Ledger rose from $32.31 million in July to $44.42 million in August. That figure looks small compared to Ethereum or Solana, but the trajectory matters more than the absolute number. XRPL was never designed to be a DeFi playground. Its core use case is payments, and the payment volume numbers tell a story of growing real-world usage at scale.

The 521% spike was not a sign that XRPL usage sextupled overnight. It was a sign that the entities using the ledger are moving bigger money. And bigger money, in the world of cross-border payments, is precisely what Ripple has been building toward for a decade.

Post-settlement Ripple is a different company On August 11, 2025, the SEC and Ripple Labs jointly dismissed their appeals, ending a legal battle that had consumed both parties since December 2020. Ripple paid $125 million in fines. XRP spiked 11% on the news. But the real impact was not the price jump. It was what happened in the months after.

The settlement preserved a crucial judicial ruling: XRP sold on public exchanges does not qualify as a security. Institutional sales remain subject to securities law, but the secondary market got a clean bill of health. That distinction gave XRP a level of regulatory clarity that most competing tokens still lack, and it opened doors that had been bolted shut for years.

Within months of the settlement, Ripple closed its $1.25 billion acquisition of Hidden Road, creating the first crypto-native global prime brokerage. The deal, announced in April 2025 and closed in October, brought clearing, financing, and multi-asset market access under the Ripple umbrella. Hidden Road, now operating as Ripple Prime, has tripled in size since the acquisition, with client collateral doubling and average daily transactions climbing past 60 million.

Ripple did not stop there. The company went on an acquisition spree, spending roughly $4 billion total on deals including GTreasury, Rail, Standard Custody, and Palisade. It secured conditional approval for a national trust bank. It raised at a $50 billion valuation. This is not the scrappy fintech startup that spent four years fighting the SEC. This is a company building a full-stack financial infrastructure play, and the settlement made all of it possible.

The ETF effect and institutional pipeline When the SEC approved multiple spot XRP ETFs in March 2026, skeptics wondered whether anyone would actually buy them. Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs had the advantage of broad name recognition. XRP was the asset that had been labeled a potential security for years. Would institutional allocators touch it?

The answer came quickly. Within 60 days, cumulative inflows into spot XRP ETFs exceeded $1.5 billion, making them the fastest crypto ETF category to reach that milestone since the Ethereum ETF launch in 2024. Products from Bitwise, 21Shares, and Canary Capital led the pack.

The approval was made possible by two regulatory shifts. The CLARITY Act, which passed in early 2026, provided the legislative framework for digital commodity classification. And the SEC and CFTC jointly classified XRP as a digital commodity under the same framework used for Bitcoin and Ethereum spot ETFs. For institutional investors who had been waiting for unambiguous legal status before allocating, the ETF approvals were the green light.

The corporate treasury pipeline also opened. Evernorth now holds $1 billion in XRP reserves. Trident Digital Tech Holdings holds $500 million. Webus International added $300 million. These are not speculative bets by crypto-native funds. These are corporate balance sheet allocations, the kind of money that tends to stay put.

Institutional trading volumes spiked 208% following the settlement and ETF approvals, reaching $12.40 billion. That volume has not retreated much since. The market structure around XRP has shifted from retail-dominated to institutionally anchored, and that shift explains why events like the monthly escrow unlock barely register anymore.

RLUSD and the stablecoin flywheel Ripple’s stablecoin, RLUSD, launched in December 2024. By September 2026, it has reached a $2.32 billion market cap, with $963 million issued on the XRP Ledger and $1.1 billion on Ethereum. For context, it took USDC years to reach that level. RLUSD did it in under two years.

The growth is not accidental. Ripple wired RLUSD directly into its institutional infrastructure. Through Ripple Prime (the rebranded Hidden Road), RLUSD became the first stablecoin to enable cross-margining between digital assets and traditional markets. Institutional clients using Ripple Prime can post RLUSD as collateral for FX, derivatives, and fixed income trades. That is not a crypto use case. That is a capital markets use case, and it explains why the stablecoin is growing so fast.

Transfer volume hit $18.4 billion in Q1 2026 alone, with more than 55% of that activity concentrated in March. RLUSD now holds 88% of all stablecoin liquidity on the XRP Ledger. Partnerships with Mastercard, JPMorgan, OKX, and Ondo Finance have expanded its reach into spot trading, derivatives, and tokenized finance.

The flywheel works like this: more RLUSD adoption means more transaction volume on XRPL, which means more demand for XRP as a bridge asset, which attracts more institutional participants, who bring more RLUSD demand. Each piece reinforces the others. And unlike speculative token demand, stablecoin-driven demand tends to be sticky. Once a treasury operation is built around RLUSD rails, switching costs are high.

The partnership map Ripple’s partnership strategy in 2026 reads like a company that no longer needs to prove it belongs in traditional finance. It is already there.

February 2026 was the landmark month. Deutsche Bank integrated Ripple’s payment infrastructure for cross-border transfers and FX operations. Aviva Investors partnered to tokenize fund structures on the XRP Ledger. Societe Generale’s SG-FORGE launched its euro stablecoin EURCV on XRPL. Zand signed on for stablecoin solutions. Figment expanded custody services.

In July, the next wave arrived: Mastercard, JPMorgan, OKX, and Ondo Finance. Each partnership targets a different piece of the financial stack. Mastercard brings card network integration. JPMorgan brings interbank settlement. OKX brings exchange liquidity. Ondo Finance brings tokenized treasuries.

In Asia, Ripple secured its third Korean partnership with Jeonbuk Bank for cross-border transfers, following deals with K Bank and Kyobo Life Insurance. Ripple Payments now handles more than $15 billion a month through on-demand liquidity, working with over 300 institutions across 55 countries.

The XRP Ledger itself is evolving. Ripple’s FinTech Builder Program supports startups building institutional-grade applications on XRPL, providing structured support from product design through market launch. The ledger has processed 2 million AI-agent payments, a small but growing use case as autonomous agents need fast, cheap settlement rails. When two AI systems need to settle a microtransaction in under four seconds with fees measured in fractions of a cent, the XRP Ledger is one of the few networks that can do it without congestion or fee spikes. Upcoming protocol upgrades include enhanced privacy features, improved programmability, and greater interoperability with other blockchains using zero-knowledge technology, with on-chain lending as a major development focus.

The AI payments angle deserves attention. Ripple Payments handled $1.3 trillion in transactions in Q2 2025 alone, working with more than 300 institutions across 55 countries and moving roughly $15 billion a month through on-demand liquidity. If even a small fraction of AI-agent commerce routes through XRPL over the next two years, the transaction volume numbers will look very different than they do today.

Three conditions analysts say XRP needs for sustained recovery are all being met: regulatory clarity, institutional adoption, and network utility growth. The question is no longer whether XRP has a use case. It is whether the market will price the use case in before or after the next macro catalyst.

Why the escrow narrative died There was a time, not long ago, when Ripple’s escrow program was the single biggest bear case against XRP. Critics argued that 1 billion tokens hitting the market every month created permanent sell pressure. They pointed to Ripple’s balance sheet, which held (and still holds) billions of XRP, as evidence that the company was dumping on retail investors.

That narrative has collapsed for three reasons.

The re-escrow rate has been consistent. Ripple has re-locked 70 to 90 percent of every monthly release for years. The net addition to circulating supply is a fraction of the headline number. In January 2026, Ripple re-escrowed roughly 700 million of the 1 billion released. The pattern has been so consistent that it is now baked into every serious valuation model.

The market grew into the supply. When the escrow program started in 2017, XRP’s total market cap was a fraction of what it is today. A billion-token release represented a meaningful percentage of daily volume. Now, with XRP’s market cap around $82 billion and daily trading volume regularly exceeding $1 billion, the monthly release is proportionally much smaller. The market can absorb it without disruption.

Institutional demand created a floor. ETF creation baskets, corporate treasury allocations, and Ripple Prime’s collateral requirements all create ongoing demand for XRP. That structural demand did not exist in 2018 or 2020 or even 2024. It exists now, and it acts as a sponge for newly unlocked supply.

The escrow unlock is not bullish or bearish. It is a scheduled, predictable, well-understood event in a market that has moved far beyond the point where supply-side scares drive prices. The September 1 release proved it. A billion tokens were unlocked, and XRP went up.

What to watch The next few weeks will determine whether XRP holds its August gains or follows the historical September pattern of giving them back. Here are the signals that matter:

Fed meeting, September 15 to 16. The Federal Reserve’s September meeting includes fresh economic projections and a dot plot update. A dovish shift could fuel risk assets broadly. A hawkish surprise would pressure everything, including XRP.

ETF flow direction. August saw $153.55 million in inflows. If September maintains that pace, XRP likely holds above $1.35. If flows reverse, the $1.20 support level comes into play.

RLUSD market cap trajectory. The stablecoin crossing $2.5 billion would signal continued institutional adoption. A stall or decline would raise questions about the sustainability of the XRPL flywheel.

On-chain activity. Active addresses staying above 1.3 million on a 7-day average would confirm that August was a structural shift, not a temporary spike.

Ripple Prime volume. Hidden Road’s rebranded prime brokerage is processing 60 million daily transactions. Growth in that number is a direct proxy for institutional engagement with the Ripple ecosystem.

October 1 escrow release. Another billion tokens will unlock. The market’s reaction, or lack of reaction, will confirm whether the escrow narrative is truly dead or merely dormant.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute financial, investment, or legal advice. Cryptocurrency investments carry significant risk, including the potential loss of principal. Always conduct your own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. Published September 7, 2026.

How much XRP did Ripple unlock from escrow on September 1, 2026? Ripple released exactly 1 billion XRP from escrow on September 1, 2026, in three separate transactions of 500 million, 400 million, and 100 million tokens. At the time of release, the tokens were worth approximately $1.38 billion. Ripple’s total escrow balance dropped from 32.28 billion to 31.28 billion XRP as a result.

Does the monthly escrow unlock crash XRP’s price? Historical data shows that monthly escrow releases produce average 7-day price swings of negative 3.1% to positive 1.7%. The September 2026 release had essentially no negative impact, with XRP trading higher five days after the unlock. Ripple typically re-escrows 700 to 900 million XRP each month, so the net supply entering the market is 100 to 300 million tokens, not the full billion.

What are XRP spot ETFs and how much money have they attracted? The SEC approved multiple spot XRP exchange-traded funds in March 2026, including products from Bitwise, 21Shares, and Canary Capital. Within 60 days, cumulative inflows exceeded $1.5 billion. In August 2026 alone, spot XRP ETFs attracted $153.55 million in new investment, with the majority arriving in the final two weeks of the month.

What is RLUSD and why does it matter for XRP? RLUSD is Ripple’s USD-backed stablecoin, launched in December 2024. It has reached a $2.32 billion market cap, with tokens issued on both the XRP Ledger and Ethereum. RLUSD matters because it drives transaction volume on XRPL, creates demand for XRP as a bridge asset, and serves as institutional collateral through Ripple Prime. It holds 88% of all stablecoin liquidity on the XRP Ledger.

How did the Ripple SEC settlement affect XRP? The SEC and Ripple jointly dismissed their appeals in August 2025, ending a legal battle that began in December 2020. Ripple paid $125 million in fines. The settlement preserved a key ruling: XRP sold on public exchanges is not a security. This gave XRP regulatory clarity that most competing tokens lack and opened the door for ETF approvals, corporate treasury allocations, and institutional adoption at scale.

What caused the 521% payment volume surge on the XRP Ledger? On August 26, 2026, payment volume on the XRP Ledger spiked 521.1% to roughly 488.4 million XRP. The surge was driven by larger individual transactions rather than more transactions (the number of payments actually fell 10.5%). This pattern suggests institutional or enterprise-scale activity, such as treasury movements or cross-border settlement batches, rather than a broad increase in retail usage.

What is Ripple Prime and how does it relate to XRP? Ripple Prime is the rebranded Hidden Road, which Ripple acquired for $1.25 billion in 2025. It is the first crypto-native global prime brokerage, offering institutional clients clearing, financing, and access to FX, derivatives, fixed income, and digital asset markets. Hidden Road migrated its post-trade activity to the XRP Ledger and uses RLUSD for cross-margining, creating structural demand for both XRP and RLUSD.

Is XRP a good investment right now? XRP is in a stronger structural position than at any previous point in its history, with regulatory clarity, approved spot ETFs, institutional adoption, and growing network utility. The token trades near $1.42 as of September 6, roughly 57% below its July 2025 cycle high of $3.65. Whether it represents a good investment depends on individual risk tolerance, time horizon, and portfolio allocation strategy. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.

Is XRP a good investment right now? XRP is in a stronger structural position than at any previous point in its history, with regulatory clarity, approved spot ETFs, institutional adoption, and growing network utility. The token trades near $1.42 as of September 6, roughly 57% below its July 2025 cycle high of $3.65. Whether it represents a good investment depends on individual risk tolerance, time horizon, and portfolio allocation strategy. This is educational analysis, not investment advice.

Flap Removes Gatekeeping From Token Market CreationFlap (flap.sh) has rolled out a Permissionless Launch feature on BNB Chain, giving project creators the freedom to design and deploy their own token markets without relying on predefined quote assets. The update marks a meaningful expansion of the platform's toolkit, removing one of the more common friction points for anyone looking to launch a new market on-chain.

Under the new feature, creators can select custom quote tokens when setting up a market. Supported options span real-world assets (RWAs), blue-chip cryptocurrencies, and trending meme tokens, broadening the range of trading pairs that can be built natively on the platform.

Programmable Mechanics for CreatorsBeyond quote token flexibility, the feature ships with a set of programmable controls. Creators can configure dedicated wallets, set dividend distributions, enable token burns, and manage liquidity parameters directly at launch. Together, these tools give teams more direct control over how their token economy is structured from day one.

Flap describes itself as programmable token infrastructure. Instead of one fixed bonding-curve format, creators pick modules such as tax tokens, custom quote assets, and reward mechanics, then assemble a launch from those components. The platform is particularly known for creator revenue sharing and tax token standards.

Flap is backed by Yzi Labs, the venture firm formerly known as Binance Labs. Yzi Labs introduced a $1 billion Builder Fund for projects building on BNB Chain, targeting sectors including trading, RWAs, AI, DeFi, and wallets. That backing places Flap within a well-resourced ecosystem built around the $BNB network.

The platform currently runs on multiple networks, including BNB Chain, X Layer, Monad, and Morph. The Permissionless Launch feature, however, is focused on BNB Chain, where some of the platform's most prominent meme tokens, including Broccoli, Moolah, and Froggie, originated.

The move reflects a broader push across the BNB Chain ecosystem to make token creation more accessible and composable, with infrastructure that can accommodate a wider range of asset types and community-driven projects.

Sources
Flap on BNB Chain DappBay | CoinDesk: YZi Labs $1B BNB Chain Fund | IQ.wiki: Flap Protocol Overview

Zcash (ZEC) trades near $1,185, up 11% over the past 24 hours. Grayscale’s Zcash ETF (ZCSH) held $463.2 million in assets as of Sept. 4.

The fund converted from Grayscale’s Zcash Trust when it began trading on NYSE Arca on Aug. 25. ZEC now ranks among the ten largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization.

ZCSH Assets Track ZEC’s RallyZCSH shares closed at $83.77 on Sept. 4, up 7.62% for the day. Shares slipped to $82.20 in after-hours trading that evening.

The fund’s net asset value per share stood at $83.48. That falls within a 52-week range of $3.54 to $84.23.

Daily volume reached 804,728 shares, per Grayscale’s own disclosures. The ETF’s year-to-date return reached 166.44%, per Yahoo Finance.

The fund held 444,608 ZEC tokens as of Sept. 4. Shares outstanding stood at 5.55 million, Grayscale reported.

Zcash has rallied strongly in the past month, more than doubling in value. Image Source: CoinGeckoGrayscale converted its Zcash Trust into the ZCSH exchange-traded fund on Aug. 25. The trust had operated since 2017.

Grayscale cited roughly $260 million in assets at conversion. ZCSH became the first US-listed spot ETF for a privacy-focused token.

For everyday investors, ZCSH means ZEC exposure without a crypto wallet or exchange account. That access is one reason inflows have grown so quickly since launch.

A New Demand for AI Safe CoinsSteve Vanourny, Grayscale’s head of index, linked the launch to rising demand for financial privacy.

“As AI reshapes how financial activity can be monitored, we believe demand for genuine financial privacy will only grow.”

Steve Vanourny, Grayscale’s head of index, Grayscale

ZEC’s rally began before the ETF launch, when it hit an eight-year high in August.

The rally has pushed Zcash’s market cap above $20 billion, per BeInCrypto data.

The token remains far below its 2016 all-time high of $3,191.93. That leaves room for further gains if inflows continue.

Whether ETF inflows keep pace with ZEC’s volatility remains an open question for investors.

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Harmony has proposed retiring its seven-year-old layer-1 blockchain and moving ONE to Ethereum, with validators able to begin shutting down nodes from Sept. 10 as the project prepares a new AI video business.

Summary

Harmony has proposed retiring its layer 1 and issuing ONE as an ERC 20 token on Ethereum after taking a final network snapshot. Users have been asked to exit smart contracts before Sept. 10, while eligible validators can begin shutting down nodes and receive compensation from a $1.372 million pool. The proposal comes weeks after an exploit created forged ONE tokens and prompted Harmony to plan a rollback removing more than 109,000 transactions. Harmony plans to give validators the option to remain as governors or participate in its new AI video initiative after the blockchain is retired. Harmony said Sunday that it wants to take a final snapshot of the network, issue ONE as an ERC-20 token on Ethereum and move exchange listings to the new token. The proposal remains non-binding, and the project has not given a date for the final block.

The plan would end Harmony’s run as an independent blockchain after launching its mainnet in 2019. The project cited security threats from state actors and AI agents when announcing the proposed shutdown.

Harmony has not said whether the plan will be put through its existing validator-led governance process. Under the network’s published governance rules, elected validators can submit proposals and unelected validators can vote, with voting power determined by stake. A proposal requires participation representing 51% of total stake weight and 66.7% support after a seven-day introduction period and 14-day voting period.

Harmony proposes moving ONE balances to Ethereum At the final Harmony block, the project plans to record ONE held in wallets, staking delegations, validator rewards, smart contracts and centralized exchanges before distributing replacement tokens on Ethereum.

Users would not have to file claims for the new tokens. Harmony said ERC-20 ONE would be sent to the same addresses recorded in the final snapshot, while delegated stakes and unclaimed validator rewards would be distributed to individual governor vaults.

The token’s total supply and emission rate would remain unchanged under the proposal. Harmony plans to make the Ethereum token contract, snapshot calculations and airdrop scripts public so they can be audited.

Not every asset or application can make the move. Multisig safes, liquidity pools and onchain applications cannot be transferred through the proposed migration, according to the project, which has asked users to exit smart contracts before Sept. 10.

Exchange-held ONE is included in the planned snapshot, with Harmony proposing to coordinate the migration of centralized exchange listings to the Ethereum version of the token.

Validators face a separate transition process. Node operators can begin shutting down from Sept. 10, while Harmony has set aside $1.372 million for validators and delegators who stop their nodes on time, sign an agreement, retain their stakes and continue as governors.

The compensation would be distributed over four quarters. Harmony said it would cover the difference in emission rewards between a validator’s last block and the network’s final block for eligible operators.

Validators could move into Harmony’s AI video project Harmony has proposed moving its work toward an AI video “remix economy” once the blockchain is retired, offering existing validators the option of remaining as governors or becoming operators or affiliates in the new project.

Under the model described by the team, a small group of video creators would publish prompts and other assets that fans could fork or remix. AI agents would then be used to turn the resulting branches into more video clips.

Operators would handle video generation, distribution and content moderation, with staking and service uptime tied to rewards. Harmony plans to subsidize GPU hardware during the first year and said operators could generate up to $1 million in combined revenue during that period, subject to the proposed staking and uptime requirements.

The project has floated a $10 monthly subscription for the service, with promoters receiving a continuing 30% commission from subscriptions they refer. Harmony said advertising could generate tens of millions of dollars if the platform reached 1 million users.

Future ONE emissions would be directed toward the new initiative, although the team said the arrangements would remain subject to feedback from governors.

Harmony shutdown proposal follows August ONE exploit The proposed shutdown follows an August security incident that forced Harmony to consider reversing days of blockchain activity after unauthorized ONE entered circulation.

On Aug. 12, crypto.news previously reported that Harmony was investigating an unauthorized mint after an outside researcher claimed nearly 4 billion ONE had been created and approximately 2.8 billion had reached centralized exchanges. Harmony had not confirmed either figure at that stage and said it was working with exchanges while examining recovery options.

A later reconstruction by the project identified more than 3 trillion ONE created across six transactions. Harmony traced the incident to a flaw in cross-shard receipt verification that allowed valid receipts to be processed more than once, creating ONE without a corresponding debit elsewhere.

By Aug. 17, the project had settled on a much more disruptive response. Harmony proposed rolling back its two shards to checkpoints recorded at 11:25:37 p.m. UTC on Aug. 11, before the forged mint activity.

For shard 0, validators were instructed to retain block 92,730,034 and restart from 92,730,035. Shard 1 would return to block 94,978,278 and resume from the following block, even though the forged mint did not originate on that shard.

The recovery would remove 141,628 consecutive shard 0 blocks containing 109,126 regular transactions and 315 staking transactions. Harmony’s analysis classified 104,545 of the regular transactions, or 95.8%, as automated activity, including nearly 100,000 transactions linked to decentralized exchange automation.

One wallet connected to the forged mint attempted 534 transfers of 5 billion ONE each within 106 seconds. Of those, 477 succeeded, moving 2.385 trillion ONE, according to Harmony’s investigation.

Investigators traced the tokens into standalone wallets, exchange accounts, decentralized exchange routers and pools, liquidity provider positions, bridge contracts, wrapped ONE and staking wallets. Harmony said it was working with exchanges, bridges and law enforcement as it tried to identify where the forged assets had moved.

Token migration was among the recovery options examined during that process, but Harmony said at the time that moving ONE would cause substantially more disruption than the rollback. Less than a month later, migration to Ethereum has become part of the project’s proposed plan to retire the network entirely.

Harmony has faced repeated token and bridge security incidents The August exploit was not Harmony’s first incident involving unauthorized ONE creation. In December 2023, the project disclosed that a staking logic flaw had resulted in 146.28 million ONE being minted across 74 delegator addresses before an emergency hard fork was deployed.

Harmony’s most prominent security breach came in June 2022, when attackers stole close to $100 million from its Horizon cross-chain bridge after compromising keys used to control the bridge.

The project worked with exchanges, blockchain analytics companies and law enforcement following the attack and raised its hacker bounty to $10 million in an attempt to recover the assets.

Harmony initially considered creating billions of ONE to reimburse users affected by the Horizon attack. A proposal published the following month included an option to mint 4.97 billion ONE for compensation, drawing opposition from community members concerned about dilution.

By September 2022, Harmony had changed course and said its revised recovery plan would not mint additional ONE or alter the token’s economics through a hard fork. The project instead proposed using treasury funds for recovery and ecosystem development.

The key catalyst for the Australian dollar remains the July inflation data released on 26 August. The figure came in at 3.5% year-on-year, versus expectations of 3.2%, while the Trimmed Mean increased by 0.5% month-on-month, compared with a forecast of 0.3%. The following day, 27 August, NAB revised its forecast for the RBA’s next policy decision. The bank now expects a 25-basis-point rate hike at the September meeting, taking the rate to 4.6%, with the risk of another increase in November.

For the Canadian dollar, the key factor was the Bank of Canada’s decision. On 2 September, the central bank left its policy rate unchanged at 2.25% for the seventh consecutive meeting, highlighting economic uncertainty stemming from US tariffs and Canada’s retaliatory trade measures.

Technical Analysis of AUD/CAD

The four-hour AUD/CAD chart shows a pronounced uptrend that has lifted the pair towards the current resistance level at 0.9985. A pattern resembling a converging triangle formed near the top of this advance, with price fluctuations gradually narrowing within the formation. However, volume dynamics during the second half of the pattern’s formation have been atypical, casting doubt on its reliability.

Nevertheless, the price has broken out of the pattern while also moving above the upper boundary of the current market profile at 0.9950, and is attempting to establish itself above this level. If the advance continues, the red resistance level around 0.9985 is the next key obstacle on the upside.

In the event of a false breakout, the price could return to the profile. If the scenario turns bearish, the pair would need to break not only the upper boundary of the profile but also the Point of Control (POC) at 0.9935 and the lower boundary at 0.9910. Below the market density, a green support level is located around 0.9895.

The RSI + MAs indicator is showing readings of 59, 52 and 54. The RSI has moved above the neutral zone, while both the fast and slow moving averages remain below its upper boundary.

Key Takeaways The atypical volume dynamics during the formation of the triangle leave the reliability of the breakout uncertain, while the price’s attempt to establish itself above the market profile has yet to receive confirmation from the RSI + MAs indicator. The pair’s further direction could depend largely on whether the expected tightening of RBA policy materialises against the backdrop of the Bank of Canada’s wait-and-see stance.

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Raydium has expanded LaunchLab to support trading between any token pair, with LaunchOnSF’s StonkFun becoming the first integration to use the new system on Solana.

Summary

Raydium LaunchLab now allows newly launched tokens to be paired with any supported quote token on the platform. StonkFun has become the first integration to use the new model after changes to Raydium programs, aggregators and trading terminals. StonkFun said deployment costs have fallen to 0.03 SOL from 0.29 SOL, while liquidity fees can be directed back into liquidity. The upgrade expands LaunchLab more than a year after Raydium introduced the platform following Pump.fun’s move to its own PumpSwap exchange. According to Raydium’s Sept. 7 announcement on X, LaunchLab can now pair a newly launched token with any quote token supported through Raydium, removing the fixed pairing structure used by many token launch platforms. Raydium said the upgrade brings more flexible token pairing, deeper liquidity and lower fees for memecoin trading.

LaunchLab now supports any token pair on Raydium.

The upgrade brings flexible pairing directly to Solana, with deeper liquidity, lower fees, and stronger meme-native trading.@LaunchOnSF is the first integration partner to bring the model live on LaunchLab. pic.twitter.com/c3NFuYCRWI

— Raydium (@Raydium) September 6, 2026 LaunchOnSF confirmed that its StonkFun platform is the first integration partner to bring the feature live. Its team spent the previous week preparing the integration, which required changes across Raydium’s programs, trading terminals and aggregators before custom quote tokens could be supported.

Raydium LaunchLab now supports custom token pairs Under the new system, creators can select the quote token used for a LaunchLab deployment, allowing communities to build markets around assets other than the standard quote tokens commonly used for new Solana launches.

Raydium described the feature as the ability to launch “any token, paired with any quote token.” LaunchOnSF said Raydium updated its programs to accommodate custom quote and reward tokens, while aggregators and trading terminals needed to support routing for the resulting pairs.

The integration covers permissionless deployments, bonding curves and constant product market maker pools. LaunchOnSF said deployment costs through StonkFun have been reduced to 0.03 SOL from 0.29 SOL, while liquidity provider fees can be directed back into liquidity.

Developers do not have to use the StonkFun API to deploy tokens and can construct transactions themselves. LaunchOnSF said the system was built to reduce problems it had encountered with snipers and launches concentrated in a single wallet.

Ahead of the integration, StonkFun reported more than $392 million in total trading volume, including roughly $219 million routed through Raydium. The platform had generated $1.21 million in revenue and distributed more than $5.35 million in rewards to ecosystem holders.

More than $705,000 had been spent on buybacks and burns of its ecosystem token, while another $68,000 went toward buying and burning tokens from its 10 largest ecosystem projects, according to figures published by LaunchOnSF.

LaunchLab followed Pump.fun’s move away from Raydium Raydium first disclosed LaunchLab in March 2025 after Pump.fun began working on its own automated market maker. The platform offered creators different pricing curves and allowed third party interfaces to build on the underlying infrastructure and set their own transaction fees.

Crypto.news previously reported on Raydium’s LaunchLab plans in March 2025. An anonymous Raydium developer said at the time that the product had been under development for several months but had initially been kept on the sidelines while Pump.fun continued using Raydium for liquidity.

LaunchLab officially went live in April 2025, allowing users to create, customize and trade tokens through Raydium. Projects crossing the original 85 SOL threshold were automatically moved into Raydium’s automated market maker.

Raydium introduced customizable bonding curves, no migration cost and a 1% trading fee under the initial model. The protocol said 25% of trading fees collected through LaunchLab would be used to buy back RAY.

More than 10 projects had passed the 85 SOL threshold shortly after LaunchLab opened, while RAY rose roughly 13% following the launch before giving back part of the move.

LaunchLab arrived after Pump.fun changed a relationship that had directed a steady flow of newly created memecoins toward Raydium.

Tokens launched through Pump.fun had historically moved into Raydium liquidity pools after completing their bonding curves. Pump.fun began testing its own automated market maker in February 2025, opening a path for graduated tokens to remain inside its own trading infrastructure.

PumpSwap ended Pump.fun’s reliance on Raydium Pump.fun formally moved away from the previous setup when it launched the PumpSwap DEX in March 2025.

Built around a constant product automated market maker similar to Raydium v4 and Uniswap v2, PumpSwap allowed tokens completing Pump.fun bonding curves to migrate directly to its own liquidity pools. Users could create pools, provide liquidity and trade tokens without sending graduated launches to Raydium.

PumpSwap introduced instant migrations and removed the six SOL migration fee previously associated with the process. The platform initially charged 0.25% on trades, allocating 0.20% to liquidity providers and 0.05% to the protocol.

Trading activity climbed quickly. PumpSwap captured 21% of Solana DEX trading about a week after launch, with cumulative volume exceeding $1.2 billion. Raydium remained ahead with a 57.4% share at the time.

By March 30, PumpSwap had recorded $2.43 billion in volume, alongside $5.4 million in protocol fees, around 700,000 active wallets and 30.59 million swaps. Raydium accounted for 74% of Solana DEX volume on that date, compared with PumpSwap’s 8%.

Raydium had entered the contest from a strong position in memecoin trading. A CEX.io report showed its memecoin volume share rising from 77% to 83% during the first quarter of 2025.

Pump.fun was responsible for more than half of daily SPL token creation at the time, with tokens previously flowing into Raydium after meeting Pump.fun’s graduation requirements. That pipeline changed once PumpSwap began taking the migrations directly.

Raydium remains a major Solana trading venue Despite heavier competition among Solana exchanges and launchpads, Raydium has remained one of the network’s largest execution venues.

Across 2025, the protocol processed $352.8 billion in execution layer DEX volume. Meteora followed with $113.7 billion, while Orca and SolFi recorded $103.9 billion and $97.9 billion, respectively.

More recent activity has remained spread across several Solana venues. On Aug. 21, 2026, Solana generated approximately $2.8 billion in daily decentralized exchange spot volume. PumpSwap processed roughly $485 million, followed by BisonFi at $466 million, Orca at $307 million, Raydium at $260 million and Manifest at $218 million.

The five platforms together accounted for approximately $1.74 billion of the network’s daily total.

LaunchLab’s latest update changes the type of markets that can be created through Raydium’s launch infrastructure. Instead of requiring creators to launch against a predetermined quote asset, StonkFun deployments can select another supported token and carry that pairing through the bonding curve and subsequent liquidity setup.

Raydium ecosystem contributor Infra said the structure lets a community pair a meme token with another asset its users already follow and use the same asset for rewards. LaunchOnSF became the first partner to put that model into production through StonkFun following the Sept. 7 rollout.

The NZD/USD pair trades in negative territory near 0.5875 during the early European trading hours on Monday, pressured by a firmer US Dollar (USD). Traders raise their bets on a US Federal Reserve (Fed) rate hike in the September policy meeting following stronger-than-expected US jobs data. 

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed on Friday that US Nonfarm Payrolls (NFP) climbed by 162K in August, versus an upwardly revised rise of 21K prior. This figure came in above the market consensus of 56K. Meanwhile, the Unemployment Rate held steady at 4.1% during the same period. Fed funds futures are now pricing in roughly a 60% probability of a hike, according to the CME FedWatch tool.

A dovish hike from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) could undermine the New Zealand Dollar (NZD). The RBNZ decided to raise the Official Cash Rate (OCR) by 25 basis points (bps) to 2.75% last week. RBNZ Governor Anna Breman stated that it’s likely there will be a further increase, but policymakers want to take time to assess the impact of the increases to date.

RBNZ continues gradual tightening as inflation risks monitoredAnalysts at Commerzbank note that the RBNZ delivered a widely anticipated move, with the central bank raising the Overnight Cash Rate (OCR) by 25bp to 2.75% “as expected,” and reiterating that “a gradual removal of monetary stimulus was appropriate to return inflation sustainably to the target.” The bank highlights that while headline CPI remains elevated, largely on the back of Middle East-related fuel costs, most core inflation measures are still within the RBNZ’s 1–3% band, suggesting that the pace of any further tightening will hinge on the “persistence” of inflation pressures and the strength of the domestic recovery.

Technical Analysis: NZD/USD extends consolidation the near termIn the daily chart, NZD/USD sits between nearby structural bands, holding above the 100-day moving average (MA) while still trading below the Bollinger middle band. This configuration, together with a 14-day Relative Strength Index (RSI) hovering around a neutral 48, suggests a consolidative near-term tone, with price caught in a range rather than showing a clear directional break.

On the topside, initial resistance is seen at the Bollinger middle band around 0.5910. The next upside target is located at the Bollinger upper band further up near 0.5985. 

On the downside, the 100-day MA at about 0.5845 offers the first layer of support, ahead of the Bollinger lower band clustered just below 0.5830, which would need to give way to signal a deeper corrective move. A break below this level could expose the July 27 low of 0.5771. 

(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool. Know more.)

New Zealand Dollar FAQs The New Zealand Dollar (NZD), also known as the Kiwi, is a well-known traded currency among investors. Its value is broadly determined by the health of the New Zealand economy and the country’s central bank policy. Still, there are some unique particularities that also can make NZD move. The performance of the Chinese economy tends to move the Kiwi because China is New Zealand’s biggest trading partner. Bad news for the Chinese economy likely means less New Zealand exports to the country, hitting the economy and thus its currency. Another factor moving NZD is dairy prices as the dairy industry is New Zealand’s main export. High dairy prices boost export income, contributing positively to the economy and thus to the NZD.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) aims to achieve and maintain an inflation rate between 1% and 3% over the medium term, with a focus to keep it near the 2% mid-point. To this end, the bank sets an appropriate level of interest rates. When inflation is too high, the RBNZ will increase interest rates to cool the economy, but the move will also make bond yields higher, increasing investors’ appeal to invest in the country and thus boosting NZD. On the contrary, lower interest rates tend to weaken NZD. The so-called rate differential, or how rates in New Zealand are or are expected to be compared to the ones set by the US Federal Reserve, can also play a key role in moving the NZD/USD pair.

Macroeconomic data releases in New Zealand are key to assess the state of the economy and can impact the New Zealand Dollar’s (NZD) valuation. A strong economy, based on high economic growth, low unemployment and high confidence is good for NZD. High economic growth attracts foreign investment and may encourage the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to increase interest rates, if this economic strength comes together with elevated inflation. Conversely, if economic data is weak, NZD is likely to depreciate.

The New Zealand Dollar (NZD) tends to strengthen during risk-on periods, or when investors perceive that broader market risks are low and are optimistic about growth. This tends to lead to a more favorable outlook for commodities and so-called ‘commodity currencies’ such as the Kiwi. Conversely, NZD tends to weaken at times of market turbulence or economic uncertainty as investors tend to sell higher-risk assets and flee to the more-stable safe havens.

TL;DR: Thursday’s ECB hike to 2.50% is almost fully priced, but economists overwhelmingly expect it to be the last move while markets price roughly two more hikes within a year — and EUR/GBP is testing a major resistance cluster at 0.8610–0.8617 at exactly the moment that disagreement needs resolving.

The Hike Is Almost Certain. What Comes After It Is Not. Calling Thursday’s ECB meeting a non-event because a 25bp hike is already almost fully priced misses the part of the meeting that actually matters.

There’s little disagreement over the immediate decision. Markets assign roughly a 95% probability to a rate increase from 2.25% to 2.50%, while all 65 economists in the latest Reuters poll expect the same move. But beyond September, the consensus breaks apart sharply.

Economists overwhelmingly think Thursday will mark the end of the tightening campaign. Rates markets do not. Some 91% of economists expect the deposit rate to finish 2026 at 2.50%, while 78% see it still there through the middle of 2027. OIS pricing, by contrast, implies around 72bp of cumulative tightening over the coming 12 months — roughly three hikes in total, including the one expected this week.

That leaves close to two additional moves embedded in the curve beyond Thursday. So the real question isn’t whether the ECB hikes. The hike is priced. The rate path is not. And EUR/GBP has arrived at a particularly awkward place for that disagreement to be resolved.

EUR/GBP Is Testing More Than Just Another Resistance Level The pair has recovered from 0.8453 into a resistance zone where several independent technical methods converge.

On the daily chart, the broader cycle runs from the October 2024 base around 0.8221 through the rally to 0.8863, followed by a decline that developed through lower highs before stalling at 0.8453. That low wasn’t technically random. The 61.8% retracement of the entire 0.8221–0.8863 advance sits around 0.8466, almost exactly where the decline eventually found support. That strengthens the significance of 0.8453 as a potential medium-term turning point.

But proving a bottom exists is very different from proving a new uptrend has begun. EUR/GBP has now reached the 0.8610 area, and this is where the recovery faces its first serious test. Three separate forms of daily resistance converge there.

First is horizontal structure. EUR/GBP previously consolidated around 0.8610 on two occasions during the decline, giving the zone clear historical significance. Second is the 38.2% retracement of the 0.8863–0.8453 decline, which also comes in almost exactly at 0.8610.

The weekly chart raises the bar further. The 55-week EMA currently sits around 0.8617, leaving EUR/GBP facing a broader resistance cluster between roughly 0.8610 and 0.8617. That matters because the pair isn’t simply approaching a level where one technical method happens to suggest resistance — several different structures are saying much the same thing. It will probably take real fundamental conviction to clear them.

Momentum Has Already Started to Hesitate The higher-timeframe momentum picture is still constructive. Daily RSI is around 61, leaving considerable room before overbought territory, while daily MACD has crossed higher and is holding above zero. There’s no obvious daily exhaustion signal.

The four-hour chart, however, is beginning to tell a different story. EUR/GBP reached 0.8607 last week, effectively tagging the lower edge of the resistance cluster, but momentum failed to confirm the move. Four-hour MACD shows bearish divergence, as the latest price high wasn’t accompanied by a matching momentum peak. Four-hour RSI is only around the upper-50s.

The rally hasn’t stalled because EUR/GBP is already deeply overbought. It has stalled because momentum is fading exactly where substantial resistance should be expected. That makes the current setup genuinely two-sided. A rejection would fit the existing structure. But there’s still enough higher-timeframe momentum for a sufficiently strong catalyst to force a breakout. Thursday’s ECB projections could provide that catalyst.

Economists and Markets Are Making Different Bets The ECB announces its decision on Thursday, September 10, at 1215 GMT, followed by President Christine Lagarde’s press conference at 1245 GMT.

The expected hike itself is close to settled. The latest Reuters poll, conducted between August 31 and September 3, found all 65 economists expecting a 25bp increase to 2.50%. That conviction has risen steadily: 83% expected a September hike in the previous poll, compared with 72% before the July meeting, when the ECB ultimately held rates unchanged.

But the firm consensus around September masks a much bigger disagreement about what comes next. Economists largely see this as the second and final move of what would be the ECB’s shortest tightening campaign in 15 years. Markets are leaving the door much wider open.

OIS pricing late Sunday put Thursday’s hike probability at 94.8%, equivalent to around 23.7bp of tightening. Yet the curve discounts approximately 72.1bp over the next 12 months. October itself carries only around a 40% probability of another move, while December is somewhat higher at roughly 44%, consistent with the possibility that the ECB could skip October and wait for the next major projection round.

But the exact meeting doesn’t matter as much as the cumulative message. Investors are effectively saying September probably won’t be enough. Economists are saying it probably will. Thursday’s projections need to begin telling markets which side has the stronger case.

The June Forecasts Already Included the Iran Shock This is why simply seeing higher inflation forecasts on Thursday wouldn’t automatically be hawkish. The ECB’s June projections were already constructed after the Iran war had become a major economic shock.

On June 11, the ECB raised the deposit rate from 2.00% to 2.25%, the main refinancing rate from 2.15% to 2.40%, and the marginal lending rate from 2.40% to 2.65%. The central bank explicitly tied the decision to the conflict and its effects on commodity markets.

Its June staff projections put headline inflation at 3.0% in 2026, 2.3% in 2027, and 2.0% in 2028. Core inflation excluding energy and food was projected at 2.5%, 2.5%, and 2.2%. GDP growth was seen at 0.8%, 1.2%, and 1.5% over the same three years.

Compared with March, the direction was already stagflationary: inflation forecasts moved higher while growth was revised lower, with the ECB linking both changes to the war’s effects on energy prices, real incomes, and confidence. So Thursday isn’t about whether the ECB has suddenly discovered an energy shock. It’s about whether that shock is proving more persistent or more broad-based than the ECB assumed in June.

Headline Inflation Says One Thing. Core Inflation Says Another. The latest inflation data make that question unusually clean. Eurozone headline inflation accelerated from 2.9% in July to 3.3% in August, putting it above the ECB’s 3.0% full-year projection for 2026. But the increase was driven overwhelmingly by energy.

Underlying measures moved the other way. Core CPI eased from 2.5% to 2.4%, while services inflation slowed from 3.3% to 3.0%. That divergence is the heart of Thursday’s policy debate.

If headline inflation is rising because the conflict has pushed up energy prices, while core and services inflation continue to cool, the ECB is dealing primarily with a supply shock. Higher rates can’t produce more oil or reopen shipping routes. They matter only if those higher energy costs begin feeding into wages, services prices, and inflation expectations. So far, the latest data don’t clearly show that second-round process taking hold.

That’s why the economist consensus can simultaneously accept a September hike and reject the need for several more afterward. The ECB can respond to the immediate inflation risk without concluding that a prolonged tightening campaign is necessary.

The complication is that supply shocks don’t always stay clean. Persistent increases in visible fuel, diesel, and food costs can influence inflation expectations. If households and workers start building those costs into wage demands, and companies begin passing them into broader prices, the distinction between an energy shock and underlying inflation becomes much less comfortable. Thursday’s projections should show whether the ECB thinks Europe is moving closer to that point.

Three Forecast Tests Matter More Than the 25bp Hike 1. Headline Inflation: How Big Is the Revision? A higher 2026 headline inflation forecast would hardly be surprising after August inflation reached 3.3%. The more important question is what kind of revision the ECB makes.

A modest increase confined mainly to 2026 could amount to little more than technical acknowledgement of higher energy prices already visible in the data. That wouldn’t, by itself, justify another two hikes after September. A larger revision extending meaningfully into 2027 would carry more significance, implying the ECB sees the inflation shock lasting longer than anticipated in June.

2. Core Inflation: The Real Hawkish Test The core projections are much more important. In June, the ECB forecast core inflation at 2.5% in 2026, 2.5% in 2027, and 2.2% in 2028.

If that path is unchanged or revised slightly lower, the central bank would effectively be confirming that underlying inflation hasn’t materially deteriorated despite the increase in energy-driven headline CPI. That would strongly reinforce the “September and done” argument.

A meaningful upward revision would carry a completely different message. It would suggest policymakers see evidence — or at least a growing risk — that the supply shock is beginning to bleed into more persistent inflation dynamics. That’s the kind of surprise that could justify the extra tightening currently embedded in the market curve.

3. Growth: How Much Damage Is the Shock Doing? The June growth projections provide the other side of the equation. The ECB expected GDP growth of 0.8% in 2026, 1.2% in 2027, and 1.5% in 2028.

Private-sector consensus remains broadly aligned with the first two numbers, suggesting no obvious reason for a large revision based purely on the growth data available so far. But the intensifying conflict creates clear downside channels through energy costs, weaker household purchasing power, and confidence.

If the ECB cuts growth further while raising inflation, Thursday becomes more complicated rather than simply more hawkish. Higher inflation alongside weaker growth strengthens the policy trade-off. That’s why markets need to look beyond the headline forecast revision and ask what exactly is driving it.

Scenario One: The ECB Confirms This Is Still Mainly a Supply Shock The cleanest EUR-negative outcome would be straightforward. Headline inflation is revised modestly higher, but core inflation stays broadly unchanged or eases. Growth stays close to the June path or receives a moderate downgrade.

That would tell markets the ECB still sees much of the inflation deterioration as energy-driven rather than evidence of a broader inflation resurgence. It would also validate the dominant economist view that Thursday’s hike can be the last.

This is where the asymmetric market risk becomes important. September itself doesn’t need to be repriced lower — the 25bp increase can happen exactly as expected. The adjustment would come from the additional tightening priced beyond September. With around 72bp embedded over the next year, the curve has significant room to remove future hikes without challenging Thursday’s move at all.

That would be a genuinely EUR-negative outcome. For EUR/GBP, rejection from the 0.8610–0.8617 resistance cluster would then have both technical and fundamental backing. The more important bearish confirmation would come below 0.8545. A break there would strengthen the view that the rebound from 0.8453 was corrective rather than the start of a durable trend reversal, exposing 0.8453 again. A renewed break of that low would reopen the broader decline from 0.8863.

Scenario Two: The ECB Validates the Market’s Hawkish View The bullish EUR scenario requires more than an energy-driven headline revision. Core inflation would need to move higher as well, or the projections and Lagarde’s communication would need to show the ECB is becoming more concerned about second-round inflation pressure.

The press conference could be just as important as the forecasts here. The ECB has repeatedly emphasized that it isn’t pre-committing to a particular rate path and will decide meeting by meeting. If that language stays essentially intact while Lagarde makes little effort to push back against the roughly two additional hikes markets are pricing beyond September, investors could interpret the meeting as tacit confirmation that the tightening cycle still has room to run.

That would give EUR/GBP the kind of Euro-specific catalyst needed to challenge the current technical ceiling. A decisive break through 0.8610–0.8617 would be the first important signal that the decline from 0.8863 completed at 0.8453. The next immediate objective would be the upper boundary of the descending daily channel around 0.8644. A sustained break there would make the recovery from 0.8453 look increasingly like a genuine reversal rather than another rebound within the broader decline.

Scenario Three: The ECB Solves Nothing The third outcome may be the easiest to imagine and the hardest to trade. Headline inflation is revised higher. Growth is cut. Core inflation moves too little to settle whether the shock is genuinely spreading.

That would leave the ECB facing essentially the same two-sided problem it described in June: upside inflation risk and downside growth risk at the same time. In that environment, markets may struggle to decide whether the extra tightening already priced into the curve is justified.

EUR/GBP could reject again from 0.8610 without generating enough downside conviction to break 0.8545. And if that happens, the technical stalemate simply survives another day. Friday’s UK data could then become the tie-breaker.

Friday’s UK GDP Matters Most If the ECB Leaves a Draw The ONS releases July monthly GDP on Friday, September 11, alongside the trade balance, industrial and manufacturing production, construction output, and the NIESR monthly GDP tracker.

The broader UK growth picture is modest rather than collapsing. GDP growth slowed from 0.6% q/q in Q1 to 0.4% in Q2, while the IMF forecasts 1.0% growth for 2026 and the OECD 0.9%.

That gives Friday’s releases clear Sterling relevance. But they shouldn’t displace Thursday’s ECB meeting as the central driver of this setup. If the ECB convincingly validates further tightening, EUR/GBP may already be testing or breaking resistance before the UK numbers arrive. If the ECB instead reinforces the “one and done” view, the Euro could already be retreating from resistance, leaving UK data as a secondary confirmation or counterweight. Friday becomes most important under the mixed scenario, where Thursday fails to provide enough conviction to resolve either side of the technical range.

ActionForex’s Technical View on EUR/GBP: The Market Has Already Drawn Its Own Line EUR/GBP is approaching Thursday with an unusually clean combination of fundamental and technical uncertainty. The rate decision itself is almost known. The projections are not.

Economists overwhelmingly think 2.50% will mark the end of the ECB’s tightening campaign. Rates markets are effectively pricing another two moves beyond September. That disagreement is now meeting a technical structure that also demands resolution.

At 0.8610–0.8617, EUR/GBP faces horizontal resistance, a major Fibonacci retracement, the descending daily trendline, and the 55-week EMA. Four-hour momentum has already begun to fade around the zone, but the daily recovery hasn’t yet exhausted itself. The pair therefore needs conviction, not merely another expected rate hike.

If Thursday shows headline inflation is hotter but underlying inflation remains contained, the additional tightening embedded in the curve has room to unwind. Rejection from resistance would then gain a clear fundamental explanation, with 0.8545 becoming the critical downside trigger.

If the ECB lifts the core inflation path and leaves markets comfortable pricing further tightening, the Euro could finally gain enough support to break the resistance cluster. That would shift attention toward 0.8644 and strengthen the case that 0.8453 marked a more durable bottom.

And if the projections split the difference, Friday’s UK GDP may have to finish the job. Either way, dismissing Thursday because the hike is already priced misses the real trade.

The hike is priced. The rate path is not. And EUR/GBP is sitting exactly where that difference starts to matter.

Key Takeaways Thursday’s ECB hike to 2.50% is nearly certain, but economists (91% see 2.50% through year-end) and markets (72bp priced over 12 months) disagree sharply on what comes after it. Core inflation (2.4% in August) and services inflation (3.0%) are both cooling even as headline inflation rises to 3.3% on energy, making the core forecast path the real hawkish test. EUR/GBP faces a genuine resistance cluster at 0.8610-0.8617, where horizontal structure, a 38.2% retracement, and the 55-week EMA all converge. An unchanged or lower core inflation path would validate the “September and done” view and favor rejection toward 0.8545 and then 0.8453. A higher core inflation path, or a press conference that doesn’t push back on further tightening, would open a break toward 0.8644, with Friday’s UK GDP as the tie-breaker if Thursday leaves the question unresolved.

Shares of UiPath (PATH -16.63%) sank despite the company reporting solid fiscal second-quarter results and raising its full-year guidance. The stock is now down on the year, as of this writing.

UiPath began as a robotic process automation (RPA) company that lets customers use software bots to perform repetitive, rule-based tasks; however, it has been in the middle of transforming itself in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Its goal now is to be an orchestration platform that can combine AI with deterministic automation.

Let's dig into the company's quarterly results and prospects to see if this dip is a buying opportunity.

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Moving in the right direction UiPath said its platform that can orchestrate both AI agents and bots was beginning to resonate with customers as it can give them better returns on their investments and that its strong roots in governance and reliability were a competitive advantage. It also believes that being AI model agnostic is an important differentiator. Its AI momentum could be seen in the quarter with 18 of its 20 largest deals including an AI component.

The company has been working to strengthen its go-to-market strategy and said increased deal sizes and expanded customer engagement were evidence this was starting to pay off. However, it noted that customer education was still important, as it looks to bestow the benefits of how combining AI with deterministic automation can help enterprises. The company is also considering offering outcome-based pricing models to increase customer value and adoption. Finally, it continues to add prebuilt vertical and outcome-oriented solutions to help drive growth and be a gateway for its entire solution.

For its fiscal Q2, revenue rose 13% year over year to $410 million, cruising past guidance for revenue of between $395 to $400 million. Its annualized recurring revenue (ARR) rose by 12% year over year to $1.94 billion. Meanwhile, it added $37 million in new ARR in the quarter, up 19% year over year. UiPath's ARR is made up of its annualized invoiced amounts from subscription licenses and maintenance and support obligations, while it excludes invoiced amounts related to perpetual licenses or professional services. The metric is similar to bookings.

Dollar-based net retention came in at 109%, showing that the company is seeing solid growth within its existing customer base. It also had 97% gross retention.

UIPath ended the quarter with 10,350 customers, which was down from 10,550 at the end of Q1 as it continues to see attrition among smaller customers. Customers with $30,000 or more in ARR increased by 6% year over year, and customers with $100,000 or more in ARR increased 10%. Meanwhile, customers with $1 million or more in ARR jumped 21% to 387.

Adjusted earnings per share (EPS) was steady at $0.15. The company generated $31 million in operating cash flow and free cash flow. It ended the quarter with $1.41 billion in cash and marketable securities and no debt.

Looking ahead, UIPath forecast Q3 revenue in the range of $440 million to $445 million, representing growth of 8% at the midpoint. It guided for ARR between $1.992 billion and $1.997 billion.

For the full year, it raised its revenue guidance to a range of $1.789 billion to $1.794 billion from an earlier outlook of $1.776 billion to $1.781 billion. It now expects ARR of $2.065 billion to $2.070 billion versus between $2.058 billion and $2.063 billion previously.

Image source: The Motley Fool

Can the stock rebound? UiPath continues to have a nice opportunity in front of it, and it appears to be seeing some green shoots from its efforts. However, for the stock to work, it does really need to see growth start to accelerate.

The stock remains relatively cheap, trading at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 4.4 times for a high gross margin, recurring business model. Take out its $1.4 billion in cash and marketable securities, and the stock trades at an enterprise-value -to-forward-sales ratio of just around 3.5.

Given its valuation, I think UiPath remains an interesting, speculative AI stock to own.

After nearly four years of steadily amassing a cash balance of $397 billion, Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA -0.48%) (BRKB -0.41%) is finally putting a measurable amount of that money back to work.

Oh, most of it still remains on the sidelines, undeployed. Specifically, as of the end of the conglomerate's second fiscal quarter, which ended in June, it still had nearly $366 billion in liquidity. That's a reduction of $31 billion in just three months' time, or less than one-tenth of its cash pile. 

Still, it's a start.

So where did all that money go? It's not too tough to figure out.

Image source: Getty Images.

Where the money went The biggest chunk of that $31 billion went toward the purchase of more shares of technology giant Alphabet (GOOG -1.05%) (GOOGL -1.11%). Berkshire ended Q1 with 54.2 million "A" shares of the company (worth roughly $15.6 billion at the time), plus a handful of "C" shares. Now it owns a bunch more of both, with a collective stake worth nearly $36 billion. That makes Alphabet Berkshire Hathaway's third-biggest holding, right behind American Express.

That's certainly not the only addition Berkshire's current CEO Greg Abel -- with some guidance from Warren Buffett, of course -- made to the company's equity portfolio during the second quarter, though. Although it already owned stakes in both, the company scooped up another 17.5 million shares of Delta Air Lines (DAL +1.80%) to bring its count to 57.3 million, and more than doubled its position in department store chain Macy's (M +2.58%), adding another 4.3 million shares. Those trades would have cost on the order of $1.6 billion and $100 million, respectively.

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Expanded positions in homebuilder Lennar (LEN -1.03%) (LENB -0.81%) and The New York Times Company (NYT +0.33%) would have also used up some of Berkshire's cash, although not nearly as much as the $17 billion it shelled out to expand its stake in Alphabet.

Perhaps Abel's most noteworthy use of Berkshire Hathaway's idle cash during Q2, however, wasn't a new pick or adding to an existing one. It's the $4.5 billion used to repurchase outstanding shares of Berkshire itself. That's a dramatic increase from the $235 million spent on the company's own stock in Q1, snapping a six-quarter hiatus in share buybacks.

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It's also worth noting that Berkshire Hathaway sold on the order of $3.7 billion in equity holdings during the three months in question, bolstering the conglomerate's quarter-ending cash balance. The remainder of any difference between the sum total of these purchases minus the proceeds of these sales reflects capital spending or net costs incurred by Berkshire's privately owned businesses, such as GEICO Insurance, Clayton Homes, Pilot Travel Centers, and Dairy Queen, just to name a few.

Picky about picks, but also patient The allocation of this cash deployment is interesting, to be sure. Perhaps more interesting, however, is the fact that Abel is finally doing something with all of that idle capital. Yet, Berkshire's CEO doesn't appear to be in a rush to put it all to work at once. This patience is just as impressive as the conglomerate's stock's long-term price performance.

American Express is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. James Brumley has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, American Express, Berkshire Hathaway, Lennar, and The New York Times Co. The Motley Fool recommends Delta Air Lines. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

BlackRock has found a way to solve one of crypto’s most persistent identity crises: what do you do when you’re sitting on a mountain of Bitcoin but want the comfort of a brokerage account? You swap it, directly, for shares of the iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), no sale required.

The firm’s in-kind conversion program has quietly processed over $5 billion in direct Bitcoin-to-IBIT swaps as of August 2026. That figure was sitting at roughly $3 billion back in October 2025, meaning the pipeline has grown by more than 60% in less than a year.

The $1 million door just opened wider The acceleration traces back to a single decision made in July 2026. BlackRock slashed the minimum transaction size for in-kind conversions from $25 million down to $1 million.

At the old threshold, the program was essentially a velvet-rope affair for the ultra-wealthy and institutional holders. A $25 million floor meant you needed to be holding roughly 250 Bitcoin (give or take, depending on price) just to walk through the door. The new $1 million minimum opens the program to a much broader class of high-net-worth individuals, family offices, and smaller funds.

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The mechanics work through authorized participants, the intermediaries that create and redeem ETF shares. A Bitcoin holder delivers their coins to the authorized participant, who in turn delivers them to the trust and issues IBIT shares back to the holder. No sale hits the market. No immediate capital gains tax event gets triggered.

Why whales are biting Self-custody at scale is genuinely difficult. Hardware wallets, multisig setups, seed phrase management, inheritance planning: all of these become exponentially more stressful when the number after the dollar sign has seven or eight digits. A single operational error can mean permanent, irreversible loss.

By converting into IBIT shares, holders get their Bitcoin exposure wrapped inside the familiar infrastructure of Wall Street. Custodial risk shifts to Coinbase (IBIT’s custodian) and the broader ETF ecosystem. The shares sit in a standard brokerage account, show up on consolidated wealth statements, and can be margined, lent, or used as collateral just like any other security.

Robbie Mitchnick, BlackRock’s head of digital assets, has pointed to the growth potential of this market segment as the accessibility barriers continue falling.

IBIT’s gravitational pull IBIT remains the largest US spot Bitcoin ETF by both assets under management and flows, and the in-kind conversion program is widening that lead.

Every Bitcoin that flows into the trust through a direct swap adds to IBIT’s asset base without requiring a cash purchase on the open market. Cash creations, where an authorized participant buys Bitcoin on the market and delivers it to the trust, can move prices. In-kind creations simply transfer existing coins from one owner to the trust, which is price-neutral in the immediate term but still grows the fund’s footprint.

Other ETF issuers are exploring similar in-kind conversion options, but BlackRock’s distribution network gives it a structural advantage. The firm manages over $10 trillion in total assets across its platform, which means it already has relationships with the advisors, family offices, and institutions most likely to facilitate these conversions.

Tax strategy meets asset management When a Bitcoin holder sells their coins on an exchange, they realize a capital gain (or loss) at the moment of sale. The in-kind swap structure sidesteps this by treating the transaction as a like-kind exchange rather than a sale, deferring the tax liability into the future.

This isn’t a permanent tax avoidance strategy. The holder’s cost basis in the original Bitcoin carries over to the IBIT shares, so the tax bill comes due eventually, presumably when the shares are sold. But the ability to defer that event indefinitely, or until a more tax-efficient moment arises, is enormously valuable for wealth planning purposes.

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In brief Ripple struck a multi-year deal with the University of Florida to feature the XRP logo on the field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, plus digital properties and signage, alongside a commitment to fund financial and technology education for student-athletes. It's Ripple's latest college-sports play, following a deal earlier this year to put the XRP logo on Kansas Jayhawks basketball jerseys. The branding push comes as XRP trades around $1.41—up 34.9% over 30 days but down 49.8% on the year. Ripple is taking its crypto-in-college-sports playbook to the Swamp, striking a multi-year marketing deal with the University of Florida that will splash the XRP logo across the field at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium starting this football season.

Florida Athletics announced the deal Friday, saying the XRP branding will appear on the field as well as on digital properties and event signage in Gainesville.

Myriad: Where does XRP price go next? Click to make your prediction.Beyond the marketing, Ripple committed to supporting financial and technology education for Florida student-athletes and the broader campus community, spanning both traditional finance and digital assets. Terms weren't disclosed.

"Florida has a long history of embracing innovation and technology to enhance the experience of our fans and advance our programs," University of Florida Director of Athletics Scott Stricklin said in a statement. "Ripple has established itself as an innovative leader in financial technology, and we're excited to welcome XRP to Gator Nation."

The Gators deal marks Ripple's latest push into college athletics. The company previously struck a multi-year agreement earlier this year to place the XRP logo on the University of Kansas Jayhawks' basketball jerseys, an unusual foray for a crypto brand into the marketing real estate of major college programs.

The branding blitz comes as XRP's price has held steady without much fireworks. The token traded around $1.41 on Friday, up 0.6% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko, leaving it up about 34.9% over the past 30 days but still down roughly 49.8% over the past year.

Spot XRP ETF demand, a recent tailwind, has cooled: flows were essentially flat on Sept. 4, and as Decrypt reported, the funds recently ended an inflow streak. Decrypt's XRP ETF tracker now reads XRP sentiment as "neutral," though cumulative net inflows still stand at about $1.6 billion.

The sponsorships arrive as Ripple leans into mainstream visibility, having spent years building out its payments, custody, and treasury business and recently rolling out its RLUSD stablecoin.

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The escalating conflict on X between the affected team and former Ripple developers shows that the recent large-scale wallet drain did not come as a surprise to experts.

On Sept. 3, 2026, an incident involving the mobile wallets of XRP Healthcare, formerly known as XRPayNet, occurred within the XRPL ecosystem. In just three hours, the attackers drained the balances of thousands of users, stealing approximately 267,000 XRP and millions of related tokens, which were quickly transferred to the Ethereum network.

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Forensic analysis uncovered a critical bug: users' private seed phrases were sent to a server when staking features were activated. 

Against this backdrop, developer BiasGoose stated that the incident was "not news to me," as he had previously rejected grant applications from the team.

While developers search for the stolen coins, former Ripple devs look back at the project's past sinsAs it turned out, former Ripple employees had blacklisted the project long ago. According to BiasGoose, the Uganda-linked medical initiative had shown signs of fraud from the outset. Its creators had been caught "blatantly lying about partnerships in their application" to secure funding and generate artificial hype. 

The developer stressed that the product did not need its own token at all: "whatever it was didn't need a token."

Security experts Hazard Cookie, formerly of Ripple, and Matt Hamilton confirmed that auditors had been documenting the project's architectural risks for years. The community also remembers the team as scammers who were "kicked to the curb as known scammers" during previous market cycles between 2022 and 2024.

Yup was all red flags when I spoke to them before as XRPayNet.

— Matt Hamilton (@HammerToe) September 6, 2026 In response to the criticism, the project team released an official statement confirming the hack. Platform representatives said developers were already conducting an urgent investigation, fully tracing the transactions on the blockchain and coordinating with relevant authorities to freeze and recover the assets.

XRP Healthcare's public response to criticism regarding their wallet security incident. Source: XRP Healthcare via X.comAt the same time, they accused the former Ripple developers of unethical behavior, saying that they had put their own names and money at stake while their opponents merely mocked the risks taken by others. According to the affected team, publicly celebrating the misfortune of colleagues is "genuinely pathetic," and they had expected "far more character" from industry veterans.

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At press time, the discussion on X had stalled after a harsh response from BiasGoose, who shot back that, unlike the creators of the hacked application, he "never took risks with other people's money, my guy."

While the project team attempts to trace the stolen funds and former Ripple employees point to years-old audits, the crypto community is left to assess the arguments from both sides: was this a tragic developer error or the predictable outcome of a project whose red flags had been ignored for years?

TLDR: Bitmine added 53,501 ETH through Aug. 30, lifting its disclosed Ethereum treasury to 5.9 million tokens. More than 5.06 million ETH are staked at a 2.67% annualized yield, creating a powerful rewards engine. A modeled year of staking could generate about 135,000 ETH, nearly matching Bitmine’s remaining gap. An additional 51,000 ETH purchase would cut the shortfall to about 83,000 tokens under Bitmine’s benchmark. Bitmine is still expanding its Ethereum treasury even as staking rewards move the company closer to its stated goal of owning 5% of the ETH supply. The Nasdaq-listed treasury company bought 53,501 ETH in the week through Aug. 30, raising its officially disclosed holdings to 5.9 million tokens. 

Of that total, Bitmine had already staked 5,067,309 ETH at an annualized seven-day yield of 2.67%. Meanwhile, on-chain data indicates that the company may have resumed buying almost immediately after the reported period ended. The staking base itself now produces a material stream of new ETH under the disclosed yield, changing the arithmetic behind the target.

Bitmine Adds 53,501 ETH as Staking Base Expands On Sept. 1, blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain said wallets linked to Bitmine appeared to acquire another 51,000 ETH from FalconX and BitGo. The transaction carried an estimated value of about $126 million.

Bitmine had not formally confirmed that acquisition in its latest corporate disclosure. Therefore, the transfer remains separate from the company’s official 5.9 million ETH balance. If the attribution proves correct, and the transfer represents an incremental purchase, Bitmine would hold roughly 5.95 million ETH.

That would move it considerably closer to the 5% ownership target. Using Bitmine’s own benchmark of 120.7 million ETH in circulation, a 5% position would require about 6.035 million tokens. Against its disclosed holdings, the company remains about 134,000 ETH short of that threshold.

Bitmine’s large staking position could reduce that shortfall without requiring an equal amount of direct buying. The company had 5,067,309 ETH staked as of Aug. 30. If that balance and the disclosed 2.67% yield remained constant, the stake would generate roughly 135,000 ETH over a modeled year. 

That amount nearly matches the gap between Bitmine’s official holdings and its stated ownership target. Under flat-supply and fixed-yield assumptions, the company would need to retain nearly 99% of one year’s modeled rewards.

If the additional 51,000 ETH acquisition is confirmed, the remaining gap would fall to about 83,000 tokens. Under the same assumptions, roughly 61% of the modeled annual staking rewards would cover that difference.

Tom Lee Links Regulation With Crypto Adoption Outlook Bitmine chairman and Fundstrat managing partner Tom Lee has also tied the next phase of crypto adoption to U.S. regulation. During Monday’s Global Money Talk, Lee said the CLARITY Act could “open up the floodgates” for institutional adoption.

He said the current U.S. framework remains fragmented across states and argued that one federal agency should oversee the market. Lee pointed to Japan and Russia as countries that have moved toward broader national frameworks.

He also cited Ethereum’s sharp outperformance against memory stocks as evidence that investors have started positioning for another phase of crypto adoption. Russia, meanwhile, approved its first comprehensive digital asset legislation, allowing exchanges, depositories, and other providers to operate from Sept. 1.

It also caps annual retail purchases at about $3,800 through a licensed intermediary and gives digital-asset holders judicial protection. At the time of writing, Ethereum trades at $2,490.35, up 0.57% over 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

Its market capitalization stands at $303.88 billion, while daily volume has risen 39.68% to $10.32 billion. The volume-to-market-cap ratio stands at 3.39%. CoinMarketCap’s chart shows ETH rose above $2,520 before retreating toward $2,490, while prices briefly fell near $2,478.

Ethereum’s circulating and total supply currently stand at 122.02 million ETH, with no fixed maximum supply.