Kalshi is reportedly in advanced discussions with Sequoia Capital and Wellington Management to raise at least $750M at a $40B valuation, nearly doubling its May valuation.

Sequoia is already an existing investor, while the round would mark Wellington’s first investment in Kalshi as the prediction-market platform eyes a potential 2027 IPO.

Kalshi raised $1B at a $22B valuation in May and has since seen rapid growth, with annualized revenue reportedly reaching $4B in July, driven largely by sports contracts and 2026 World Cup betting.

The new round could exceed $750M, with Sequoia and Wellington potentially leading the investment. Kalshi now reportedly holds around 95% of the U.S. prediction-market share, while rival Polymarket is targeting a $20B valuation. The discussions remain ongoing and terms could still change.

The direction is clear: European money is leaving unlicensed platforms for licensed ones.

On OKX over the last 30 days, inflows from users exiting unlicensed exchanges rose fivefold, with a further €100M+ coming from regulated entities.

For a decade TI has been about one thing: sixteen teams, one Aegis, the highest stakes in esports. Now the crowd is not just watching, it is pricing the outcome in real time.

Team Vision (PARIVISION) leads at 25%, fresh off winning the Esports World Cup 2026. Team Yandex sits second at 20%, then it drops off fast: Falcons 15%, BoomBoys 14%, and and Spirit at 8%, and a long tail of dark horses down to LGD at 3%.

The bigger story is who is paying attention. predict.fun just launched its first on-chain esports event around TI15: a $100,000 plus 5M Predict Points prize pool, running Aug 13-23.

On Wednesday, Solana came 33 minutes from stopping. A single routing fault at one hosting provider, which held over a quarter of all staked SOL, knocked 28.83% of the network offline. At 33.34% the chain loses finality. Solana got 86% of the way there, then recovered.

And it was the lucky one. In 2026 four chains actually went dark:

• Sui, twice (about 6h, then 6h44m)

• Base, twice in a single week

• Starknet, at the start of the year

Ethereum, BNB, Aptos, Hyperliquid and Avalanche never flinched.

Mirae Asset is putting a further $35 million into Korbit, weeks after the Korean financial group took control of the crypto exchange and began rebranding it as Digital X.

July's takeover made Mirae the first Korean financial group to control a licensed crypto exchange, lifting its stake to about 97% for roughly $96 million (141.4 billion won). The new capital funds the plan to rebuild Korbit into an "intelligent investment platform" that blends real-world assets, security tokens, stablecoins and traditional markets with crypto.

The move deepens Korea's TradFi push into digital assets, with one of the country's largest financial groups betting that regulated crypto rails belong inside a mainstream investment house.

Investment manager VanEck has launched Market Forces TCG, a physical trading card game built to make investing concepts stick with younger audiences by teaching them through play rather than lectures.

Matches surface real principles like diversification, risk management, portfolio construction and time in the market versus timing it. The debut run is capped at 12,000 units with serialized collectible chase cards, made with Orange Cap Games and illustrated by Marvel alumni Chris Wahl and Max Ward.

It builds on Syncd Collect, the collector app VanEck rolled out earlier this year, and is open for pre-order now. VanEck frames the game as education and entertainment, not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell anything.

South Korea is tightening how money moves to offshore crypto platforms, after Bybit, MEXC and HTX had their apps pulled from the local Google Play store.

Under revised rules, exchanges can require proof of account ownership, the purpose of a transaction and the source of funds, and can delay or reject a transfer when that information is insufficient. Transfers of 10 million won (about $7,000) or more to overseas exchanges or self-hosted wallets will face enhanced suspicious-transaction monitoring.

The move tightens oversight of capital leaving regulated Korean venues for offshore platforms and personal wallets, extending Seoul's push to keep crypto flows inside supervised channels.

Goldman Sachs has agreed to buy ETF manager NEOS Investments for up to $2.25 billion in cash and stock, handing the Wall Street giant a ready-made Bitcoin and Ether income ETF business.

NEOS runs about $30 billion across 19 options-based income ETFs, including its Bitcoin High Income (BTCI), Boosted Bitcoin (XBCI) and Ethereum High Income (NEHI) funds. Rather than holding the coins, they run options strategies on crypto-linked exposure to pay out monthly income, with yields driven largely by selling option premium. Co-founders Troy Cates and Garrett Paolella join Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

The deal, expected to close in Q1 2027 pending regulatory approval, lifts Goldman's active ETF business to roughly $80 billion inside a $130 billion ETF platform, making it the eighth-largest active ETF manager and pushing it deeper into the crypto race with BlackRock.

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.