5 Aug 2025, 02:30

FinCEN Targets Crypto Kiosks as Fraud Losses Detonate Across US Markets

Crypto kiosks are fueling a new wave of fraud and cartel-driven laundering, prompting urgent calls for tighter controls across the U.S. financial system. FinCEN Sounds Alarm: Crypto Kiosks Now High-Risk Vectors for Money Laundering The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a notice on Aug. 4, warning that convertible virtual

5 Aug 2025, 01:22

Asia Morning Briefing: BTC Rebounds Toward $115K as ETF Flows Return, but Traders Still Price Tail Risk

Good Morning, Asia. Here's what's making news in the markets: Welcome to Asia Morning Briefing, a daily summary of top stories during U.S. hours and an overview of market moves and analysis. For a detailed overview of U.S. markets, see CoinDesk's Crypto Daybook Americas. As East Asia begins its trading day, bitcoin (BTC) is changing hands at just over $115K, staging a modest rebound from last week’s selloff that saw over $1 billion in leveraged longs liquidated and BTC briefly test $113K. The bounce comes amid signs of stabilization in institutional flows, with Bitwise reporting $18.74 million in net inflows, a potential reversal after one of the largest ETF outflow days on record last Friday. The latest correction, which marked BTC’s third straight Friday selloff, was driven by a hawkish macro cocktail: weak U.S. jobs data and a fresh wave of tariffs from Washington, triggering a broader risk-off mood in both equities and crypto. Altcoins bore the brunt of the move, with SOL falling nearly 20% on the week and ETH losing close to 10%. Yet despite the drop, QCP Capital remains cautiously optimistic. “The broader structural setup remains intact,” the firm wrote in a Monday note, citing BTC’s highest-ever monthly close in July. QCP views the selloff as a leverage flush rather than a trend reversal, pointing to historical post-rally shakeouts that cleared the path for renewed accumulation. That said, market hedging behavior suggests investors aren’t ruling out deeper downside. On Polymarket, traders currently assign a 49% probability that BTC dips below $100,000 before the end of 2025 — up 2 percentage points from the day prior. The pricing reflects a market that’s still on edge, with downside tail risk priced in despite supportive long-term fundamentals such as regulatory clarity, growing stablecoin adoption, and tokenization initiatives. The next catalyst could come during the Asia trading day as U.S. issuers report flows, which typically happens by mid-day Hong Kong time. If ETF inflows continue and implied volatility begins to compress, it may provide the confirmation needed for the market to embrace the buy-the-dip narrative and shake off the macro jitters that have kept it stuck in neutral. Market Movers: BTC: Bitcoin is trading back above $115,000, signaling early signs of market stabilization. ETH: Ether is holding steady around $3,700, with Polymarket traders showing confidence it will break above $4,000 sometime in August. Gold: Gold extended its rally for a third session on Monday, rising to a two-week high as soft U.S. economic data boosted expectations of a September Fed rate cut, with CME traders now pricing in an 86% chance of that happening. Nikkei 225: Asia-Pacific markets opened higher after U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled plans to sharply increase tariffs on Indian exports. Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.54% at the open. S&P 500: Stocks rebounded Monday, with the S&P 500 rising 1.47% to 6,329.94, snapping a four-day losing streak and marking its best session since May. Elsewhere in Crypto: DCG’s Barry Silbert Returns to Grayscale as Chairman Amid IPO Push (CoinDesk) Former Chancellor Osborne Warns UK Is ‘Completely Left Behind’ on Crypto (Decrypt) Pantera leads $20 million raise for OpenMind’s decentralized operating system for robots (The Block)

5 Aug 2025, 01:00

Has The Crypto Market Bottomed? Analyst Says ‘This Is It’

Macro analyst Alex Krüger says the weekend’s sell-off has likely marked a tradable low for the crypto market, arguing that the move closely mirrors the 2024 “August crash” that bottomed on a Monday. “I see the current move as a smaller scale replay of last year’s August crash (which bottomed on Monday),” Krüger wrote on late-Friday in a post on X, adding that he would “be looking to add to longs on Monday, ideally before the US cash open,” if the overnight session remained panicky. He framed the decline as a classic shakeout rather than the start of a new downtrend. Krüger’s read hinges on macro first, crypto second. He notes that 2024’s August break came in a sequence—BoJ tightening, a hawkish FOMC, then weak payrolls—and he sees the present sequence as “similar.” There was no carry-trade impulse this time, he said, but markets digested a modestly hawkish Fed, mixed Big Tech earnings, a hotter-than-expected PCE inflation print, and finally a “horrid” US payrolls report—after which risk assets slid in tandem and crypto tracked equities lower. The latest PCE data, released July 31, showed headline inflation accelerating to 2.6% year over year and core PCE at 2.8%, a notch above forecasts—what Krüger summarized as “slightly hot.” Related Reading: Crypto Hacks Surge 27% In July: $142M Stolen As 2025 Trend Continues Earnings tape-bombs reinforced the risk-off mood. Microsoft and Meta beat estimates and initially rallied, while Apple’s reception was cooler and Amazon’s results were “very poorly received,” with AMZN sliding about 7–8% as investors questioned AWS’s momentum. Coinbase’s report landed at the other extreme for crypto beta: revenue missed expectations and the stock fell, a backdrop Krüger called “dreadful” for sentiment. “Even though the aforementioned concerns emboldened bears, this week’s move has been mainly a macro story, given how crypto traded mostly in line with equity indices,” he wrote. He also flagged an unusual political and geopolitical coda to this weekend’s rout. After the weak jobs report—plus an unusually stark revision by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, May and June were revised down by a combined 258,000 jobs—markets lurched, and the White House’s subsequent decision to reposition two US nuclear submarines amid heated exchanges with Moscow added to stress, he said. Kremlin officials later tried to downplay escalation risk, calling the submarine moves “routine.” Krüger called the nuclear rhetoric and presidential barbs at the Fed “noise” for markets, but said the combination likely helped flush leveraged positions into the close. On crypto-specific drivers, Krüger listed a cluster of narratives that, in his view, amplified bearish conviction without changing the macro center of gravity: disappointing Coinbase results; debate around whether MicroStrategy could curtail its at-the-market equity issuance, limiting incremental BTC buys; questions about the sustainability of “DATs” (digital-asset treasury companies) tied to ETH; and, on the other side of the ledger, the SEC’s new “Project Crypto,” a policy push to modernize securities rules and move more market infrastructure on-chain—“an extremely bullish development that should drive inflows later in the year,” as he put it. The SEC’s chair outlined “American Leadership in the Digital Finance Revolution” last week, framing tokenization and on-chain market plumbing as a regulatory priority. Related Reading: Trump-Appointed Group Calls For Easier Crypto Regulations From Federal Authorities Krüger’s base case is timing-driven: either crypto “bottomed after today’s close, given the sheer violence of that final dump, or will be bottoming together with equities on Monday.” In his plan, the trigger to add risk was early Monday—assuming the overnight remained disorderly—on the view that the analog to August 2024 would rhyme at the turn of the week. “A violent shakeout,” he wrote, not a regime change. He remains constructive into the fourth quarter, citing three pillars: a still-solid US economy, the start of Fed rate cuts, and a steadily improving regulatory climate that should broaden institutional and retail participation. Policy churn could amplify that path. Krüger pointed to Fed Governor Adriana Kugler’s resignation—effective this month—as a potentially market-relevant shift because it hands the White House an earlier-than-expected Board vacancy, and to former Fed Governor Kevin Warsh’s call for a new “Treasury–Fed accord” as a signpost for constraints on central-bank independence. On Monday he added, “This will prove to be very important later on,” citing Warsh’s argument about “limits on the Fed’s independence to help the govt with its finances.” Whether those institutional dynamics translate into earlier or deeper rate cuts remains open, but markets have already moved to price odds to 85% for a September cut following the payrolls miss. Krüger’s longer arc is unabashedly bullish but explicitly conditional on the macro. “I remain bullish on crypto into Q4,” he wrote, while warning that ETH-linked treasury plays could “lose momentum dramatically” later in the year if goods inflation re-accelerates as corporates pass tariffs through. He set a one-year Bitcoin target for mid-2026 at $200,000–$250,000—“extreme, but possible”—on the premise that a more dovish Fed in 2026 would coincide with ongoing adoption. For now, he is treating last week’s cascade as an echo of 2024’s Monday bottom. As he put it: “Now let’s see how this ages.” At press time, BTC recovered to $ Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com