Zero-knowledge blockchain Miden is preparing to launch USDCx, a privacy-focused stablecoin backed 1:1 by Circle’s USDC through its xReserve infrastructure.

USDCx will allow users to hold and transfer stablecoins without publicly exposing balances, counterparties or transaction histories, while Miden’s selective-disclosure system enables users to reveal transaction details when required for compliance.

The stablecoin is expected to launch alongside the Miden Mainnet, targeted for the end of August.

Miden uses client-side proving, allowing transactions to be executed and proved on users’ devices rather than exposing transaction data to the network. The project aims to bring privacy to institutional use cases including B2B payments, payroll, cross-border payments, private trading and corporate treasury management.

Miden spun out of Polygon in April 2025 and is backed by a16z crypto, 1kx, Hack VC and others.

Fidelity is preparing to add Ethereum staking and quarterly cash distributions to its Fidelity Ethereum Fund (FETH), which currently holds around $898M in net assets.

Under normal conditions, FETH could stake up to 100% of its ETH, while keeping enough assets available for redemptions, expenses and liquidity needs.

Fidelity would retain 85% of gross staking rewards, with the remaining 15% going to the fund sponsor, custodians and node operators. Blockdaemon, Figment and Galaxy are named as FETH's node operators.

Net staking rewards would first cover fund expenses, with the remaining amount distributed to investors at least quarterly. Fidelity may also sell some ETH to fund the payouts.

If approved, Fidelity would join Grayscale and 21Shares in adding staking to existing U.S. Ether products, while BlackRock has opted for a separate staked-ETH ETF.

Single-token treasuries keep almost everything in their own coin. Uniswap holds $1.05B, mostly UNI. That looks great when the token is up and becomes a trap when it is not, because the treasury and the token crash together.

Diversified treasuries spread the risk instead. Mantle leads at $1.59B across multiple assets, and 310 DAOs now store this way versus just 50 that stay single-token.

The gap says a lot: 310 diversified DAOs holding $4.40B already outweigh the 50 concentrated ones on $3.17B. The market is slowly learning that a treasury denominated in your own token is not really a treasury.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is conducting a $5.179B Treasury bill purchase operation today, August 12, as part of its routine reserve-management program.

The purchases target Treasury bills maturing between September and December 2026 and are designed to maintain ample bank reserves and support smooth functioning of short-term funding markets.

The operations are part of a scheduled program rather than emergency stimulus or a new round of quantitative easing. Similar purchases of up to $5.179B were conducted on August 4 and August 11, while the August 6 operation totaled $3.453B.

The Fed uses these purchases to offset routine liquidity drains, including Treasury settlements and tax flows. While the operations can have an indirect positive impact on liquidity-sensitive assets such as Bitcoin and equities, they should not be interpreted as a major policy shift or fresh QE.

Stockholm-based AI coding startup Lovable has raised $400M in Series C funding at a $13.3B valuation, led by Menlo Ventures and co-led by EQT’s Scaleup Europe Fund.

Lovable says users have created 60M+ projects, while Lovable-built apps now generate 900M+ monthly visits. The platform is used by nearly two-thirds of the Fortune 500, with customers including Adidas, NVIDIA, and Deutsche Telekom.

The company’s valuation has more than doubled from $6.6B in December 2025, when it raised $300M.

Lovable plans to expand its product, infrastructure, and security capabilities while growing its team to around 450 employees this year.

BitGo rolled out quantum risk controls for Bitcoin wallets, led by a Quantum Risk Score that flags which addresses have public keys already exposed on-chain.

Exposed public keys are the weak point a future quantum computer could target. Alongside guided address remediation and safer UTXO defaults, the score lets institutions migrate funds before any such threat exists. BitGo is among the first major custodians to ship these tools.

Glassnode estimates about 6.04M BTC, roughly 30% of supply, already sits at addresses with exposed public keys, though no practical quantum attack is possible today.

Kalshi teamed up with Blanket, an AI tool built by economist Lauris Zminsky, that helps small businesses hedge real-world risks using its prediction markets.

Describe a risk like a hurricane, a fuel-price spike or an unusually warm winter, and Blanket's AI surfaces Kalshi yes/no markets that could offset the loss. Blanket only recommends contracts and never executes trades or holds funds. It is independent, and Zminsky does not work for Kalshi.

It is framed as an insurance alternative for bars, brands and other small firms long priced out of institutional-grade hedging.

Bitget Institutional has rolled out Project Archimedes, a $300M capital program aimed at quantitative trading firms, asset managers and market makers.

The money splits into two tracks. A $100M Capital Provider Program funds emerging quant firms running market-neutral strategies, with returns shared under an agreed structure. A $200M Interest-Free Lending Program gives established institutions interest-free capital once they meet set trading-volume or position requirements, cutting their funding costs. Eligible firms first pass strategy assessment, due diligence and drawdown reviews.

CEO Gracy Chen said the aim is to back more than 50 teams over the next six months, as tightening arbitrage returns push quants toward basis spreads, funding-rate gaps and tokenized-stock strategies that Bitget's unified account lets them collateralize in one place.

Everyone argues who leads RWA. By total value it is still Ethereum. But tokenized stocks tell a different story.

Solana holds just 23% of tokenized-stock market cap, yet settles 95-97% of all on-chain trading volume. Others hold the shares. Solana trades them.

The whole Solana RWA market is up 6.8x in a year to $2.35B, led by BlackRock's BUIDL, with a wild mix from tokenized T-Bills to collectible cards.

River AI, the two-month-old startup from xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin, raised $1.1B across seed and Series A, one of the largest rounds for any company founded this year.

The round was led by General Catalyst and AMP, with strategic checks from Nvidia and AMD plus Y Combinator and Temasek. River is building personalized AI that users and organizations own and control, and says its API runs reinforcement-learning training two to four times cheaper than closed rivals.

With no valuation disclosed, the raise is a bet that open, user-owned models can challenge the closed-source AI giants.