The U.S. national debt is set to cross $40 trillion, a mark it was expected to surpass only after Labor Day. The milestone has come faster than any previous trillion-dollar jump in the United States’ history.

Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov has called Pump.fun “a casino of scams called memecoins” while referring to Phantom’s hardware-wallet experience as worse than Metamask’s, prompting pushback from industry personnel.

Consumer confidence is sitting near its weakest levels in a decade even as U.S. stocks notch record highs, and Glassnode says bitcoin is being left out of the rotation entirely.

The Tron ecosystem continued to thrive in Q2, growing its stablecoin market cap to reach a record of $89.2 billion, with USDT as its flagship token. The project leads sub-1,000 USDT transfers amidst native-issuance chains, a testament to its allure in emerging markets.

A crypto trader turned roughly $9,700 into $282,000, a 29x return, by front-running Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao’s onchain token burns. Subsequently, CZ abandoned the wallet for good.

The Malta Financial Services Authority warned the public against Distributex, an unauthorized cryptocurrency marketing entity. The regulator flagged high-risk features resembling multilevel marketing and pyramid schemes.

A $1,532,761 Powerball prize from the Feb. 21, 2026 drawing is still unclaimed, and the California Lottery says the ticket must be cashed by August 20, 2026. The ticket was sold at Varso Gas in Escondido and matched the five white balls 27, 28, 36, 48, and 49 but missed the Powerball (21), and unclaimed winnings would be routed to California public schools under state law.

The penalty, one of the first under the MiCA framework, marks the start of an era of oversight of VASPs’ activities to ensure the uniform application of the framework across the EU. The Austrian Financial Market Authority (FMA) stressed that no special treatment would be given to Bitpanda.

The hardware wallet manufacturer stressed that unauthorized threat actors gained access to the data through a malfunctioning plugin used to track users’ orders. The incident, which transpired between March 2, 2025 and April 11, 2026, leaves users vulnerable to phishing attacks and fraudulent phone calls.

Derive now accepts FXRP as collateral for XRP options, perpetual futures and spot trades, expanding the token’s onchain utility. The integration gives wallet users self-custodial access to hedging, premium-generating and leveraged strategies.

Robert Kiyosaki is favoring silver as federal debt approaches $40 trillion, citing forecasts for gold and silver to rise sharply. His warning renews questions about cash, inflation, and volatile hard-asset strategies.

Strategy CEO Phong Le expects regulatory action, expanding bank participation, and digital financial products to bring more activity to subdued bitcoin markets, while political and economic developments could add further momentum during the fall.

Bitcoin developer Peter Todd’s proposal to give miners a permanent stream of new bitcoin has triggered a fresh backlash from users who see the 21 million supply limit as the asset’s most important promise.

During the past week, bitcoin tumbled from over $65,000 to close just above $63,200, an approximately 3.2% weekly loss and briefly hit a low below $62,500 on Aug. 14.

This week’s stories spanned old crypto fortunes, transparency, market forecasts,