深潮TechFlow · 711

Are Bitcoin's 80,000, 120,000, and 300,000 still far away?

Author: Debashree Patra Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow Original title: Bitcoin Sword Fingers at $80,000: Analysts Predict Breaking 120,000 Next Year and Shocking 300,000 in 2030 DeepWave Guide: Bitcoin rebounds strongly from around $63,000 to $75,401, completing a 5.8 times standard deviation increase within 48 hours, driving analyst Pierre Rochard to reaffirm his bullish roadmap — hitting $80,000 in 2026 and breaking through $120,000 next year. The sword in 2030 is $300,000. In the short term, bear liquidation and downtrend line breakouts provide momentum, but whether the leverage-driven surge can be turned into continued spot demand will determine whether the larger goal is realistic. Pierre Rochard's $80,000-$300,000 roadmap analyst Pierre Rochard (BitcoinPierre) expects Bitcoin to close around $80,000 in 2026. He believes that Bitcoin is not ready for a “parabolic rise,” but it is expected to break through $120,000 next year. In the longer term, he predicted that Bitcoin could reach $300,000 by 2030. The key variables in this forecast are the Federal Reserve and the broader macro environment. Rochard believes that if the economy is weak enough to allow the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates without reigniting inflation, Bitcoin will benefit from improved liquidity. He also pointed out that artificial intelligence (AI) may improve macroeconomic prospects by increasing productivity and reducing inflation. In that situation, interest rate cuts will create a more favorable environment for risky assets such as Bitcoin. The $80,000 target refocused on Bitcoin's latest price trend has shown signs of regaining momentum. BTC climbed from around $63,000 to $75401 in less than 48 hours. Previously, buyers successfully defended in the $63,000 area. Notably, Bitcoin formed higher highs and higher lows. This round of rebound was partly fueled by large-scale short liquidations. According to reports, as Bitcoin and Ethereum soared, around $14 billion to $17 billion of short crypto positions were liquidated, removing bearish leverage. Glassnode indicated an unusual pattern of this fluctuation. They said that Bitcoin's jump from around $75,401 was a 5.8 times standard deviation (5.8 sigma) of its 30-day volatility — the biggest upward move since October 2023. The last time Bitcoin closed at such a large daily rate was in February, which was only a rebound after a sharp drop of -14% the day before. And there's no crash to bounce back this time around — this is a 5.8 times standard deviation fluctuation compared to its own 30-day volatility, the biggest upward move since October 2023. — Glassnode (@glassnode) However, liquidation alone does not confirm the existence of sustainable spot demand. On-chain analyst Onchain Insights said that Bitcoin has broken through the annual downward trend line resistance and recovered to the $70,000 range. If it continues to close above this structural resistance, it may indicate a weakening of selling pressure and further upward momentum. Another analyst also said that short positions have limited resistance until $80,000, making it an important near-term target. The BTC giant whale sells for $74,000 and $80,000. The gap between these resistances is very large. ——CW (@CW8900) On Polymarket, the probability that Bitcoin will hit $80,000 in August rose to 13%, up 9 percentage points within 6 hours. BTC would need to rise about 14% more from $71,000 to reach $80,000. Can the $120,000 be recovered? Rochard expects Bitcoin to easily break through $120,000 next year if the macro environment turns favorable. His long-term goal of $300,000 by 2030 reflects broader bullish arguments around liquidity, supply, and adoption. His opinion was also supported by SkyBridge Capital CEO Anthony Scaramucci, who expected Bitcoin to surpass $100,000. He cites the halving cycle and new supply...

1d ago深潮TechFlow#Bitcoin

They are all stealing earlier data. Where exactly is VC Alpha hidden?

Author: insights4vc Compilation: Shenchao TechFlow Original title: Private Equity Market Intelligence Warfare Heats Up: In the AI Era, Where Did VC Alpha Come From? Guide to Deep Wave: Venture capital returns are extremely concentrated, and finding a good company in the early stages is almost the life and death line of a fund. This article breaks down the latest evolution of private equity market data tools and whether they can actually bring in excess profits. This is a sobering map for investors who are using AI and research tools to find projects. Venture capital has always been an information business. The advantage often lies in timing: founders tell former colleagues instead of updating data first; new companies start recruiting people before they appear in the database; investors start watching a team before the funding is announced. This advantage is important because VC returns are highly concentrated. According to data from the 2026 Oxford Academic Study, 4.5% of the investment amount contributed to a return of about 60% in a long-term LP data set. [1] Therefore, missing a few excellent companies can affect the entire fund. But finding them early is only part of the problem. Investors also need to develop beliefs, get credits, obtain meaningful holdings, and keep things right for a few years. The private equity market data industry is now getting closer to the moment the company was born. PitchBook, Crunchbase, Dealroom, Tracxn, and CB Insights remain core recording systems for transactions, funds, valuations, and company history. PitchBook generated revenue of $174.7 million in the second quarter of 2026, equivalent to nearly $700 million in annualized revenue. [2] The new platform is not replacing this layer. They're extending this layer with faster updates, behavioral data, and signals that predate traditional company records. Three changes stand out the most. First, companies such as Harmonic and Specter are building a continuously updated map of companies and people, rather than relying mainly on regularly updated data. Second, specialty products are looking for earlier behavioral signals. Evertrace tracks metrics formed by founders, including company registrations, technical activity, research, and domain names. Frontrun monitors changes in selected venture capitals' interest maps on X. Third, the API and Model Context Protocol (MCP) are moving this data into the fund's own software and AI workflows. Crustdata represents the infrastructure side of this market, while Affinity complements first-party relationship data from emails, calendars, and CRM events. Adoption is visible, but evidence of excess return on investment is not clear. Harmonic says hundreds of venture capital teams use its platform, and Specter reports more than 300 investment institutions, Evertrace more than 200 funds, and Affinity more than 3,300 private equity firms. Listed company Tracxn disclosed that it had 2,289 customer accounts in fiscal year 2026. [3] [4] [5] [6] Most of these figures are self-reported by companies. Vendors rarely disclose the complete set of companies unearthed by their models, making it difficult to assess accuracy, recall rates, false positives, and the economic value of individual leads. No single signal alone is enough. Employee departures may be early but vague. Company registration is objective but common. GitHub activities are valuable in developer-led markets, but have limited relevance in other areas. Hiring speed and employee migration provide broader signals, while revenue, customer, and usage data are often more valuable for decision-making, but come later. When several credible industry experts focus on the same company, investors' attention can provide early signs, even though this signal is platform-dependent and may reinforce itself. The strongest defensive sources are likely to be hidden deeper in the data stack: historical time series that cannot be reconstructed later, accurate physical analysis across people and companies, authorized first-party fund data, and distribution through CRM systems, APIs, and agents. Public data is not necessarily proprietary. However, five years of correctly time-stamped change history can become a proprietary asset. AI is more likely to make these infrastructures more easily queried rather than eliminate the need for them. As research, classification, and workflow costs drop, clean data, sources, and institutional context become more valuable. Investment decisions, quotas, and relationships are still not something a simple layer of automation can solve. The likely outcome is that a broader market for private market intelligence will emerge, rather than an independent search for project software categories. A mature database will increase discoveries and...

1d agoburnking

US Stock Value Investing Is Heading Into Another Trap

Source: Shenchao TechFlow Original title: (Opinion: Value investing in US stocks is not equal to fundamental investment) When “fundamentals are dead” becomes a consensus, investors who blindly organize giants will eventually experience astonishing capital destruction. Guide: When the market shouted “fundamentals are dead” and the capital frenzy formed a group of tech giants, the author used an astronomy discovery to unravel the logical loopholes behind this narrative. Starting from the composition of valuation multiples, this article reminds investors to distinguish between the true quality of an enterprise and the premium that the market is willing to pay. It is particularly cautionary about long-term allocation in the crypto and technology sector. I promise this introduction won't be as long as the last one on the weather. But please give me 90 seconds. More than 100 years ago, a woman named Henrietta Levitt was doing the tedious job of measuring the brightness of thousands of stars on photographic negatives (the way they were imaged before film appeared). She noticed one characteristic of a class of pulsating stars: the slower they pulsate, the brighter they themselves are. ¹ This might just seem a little interesting today, like “OK, that's pretty cool.” But at the time, astronomers couldn't tell the difference between a dark star very close to Earth and a very bright star far away. For them, the two left the same stain on the photographic film. Visual brightness is a messy mix of these two variables: how bright the thing itself is, and how far away it is from us. Henrietta's work decouples these two things: if you can observe the rate of pulsation, you can know its true luminosity; if you know its true luminosity, you can reverse the distance based on how dark it looks. Astronomers call it “standard candlelight.” A few years later, a man named Edwin Hubble discovered one of these pulsating stars, applied Levitt's math, and discovered what he had always thought was a cloud of gas within our galaxy; in fact, it was an entire independent galaxy, one million light years away. So in simple terms, the observable universe has grown about a trillion times larger, just because one person has figured out how to tell the difference between what things look like and what they actually look like. That in itself is obviously pretty cool. But another interesting thing is that around the same time period, two other astronomers each independently drew a scatterplot. One axis was actual luminosity, and the other axis was temperature. They discovered that stars are not randomly distributed in this space, but rather clustered into different families. The meaning behind this is: stars with the exact same visual brightness may and do belong to a completely different family, have a completely different past, and most importantly, have a completely different future... So what is written in the star? Over the past few years, there has been much discussion about markets, narratives, capital, company building, and financial nihilism. This feeling seems to have reached a feverish climax as the tech and financial world begins to face a very different future than a few decades ago. What is particularly clear is that separating progress from asset prices has become more noisy and in many ways more repulsive. But as an investor who makes a living by buying assets that (hopefully) outperform, a simple framework is: forward returns are roughly equal to growth in fundamentals multiplied by changes in valuation multiples (and multiplied by the dividends you've collected along the way). In this case, the valuation multiplier can very cleanly correspond to the smudges on the photographic film. It's an observable data point, but it entangles two things that the market can't directly see: how good the company actually is, and how far (or how long) its future cash flow is now. I think most of the money that can be made comes from investors who are most capable of unraveling these two variables earlier than others (or “perception of differences”), and we will continue to see astonishing capital ruin for investors who treat their stains as stars. Value investing is not equal to fundamental investing. I think there is a misunderstood view: fundamental investing has historically dominated the creation of excess returns. Most of these legends come from the Graham, Buffett, and Tiger Foundation lineage, as well as numerous narratives built around this group of people. It is believed that by some point in the 2000s, this approach was no longer effective, and anyone who invested in this way was overwhelmed by momentum, trends, and “direct buying tech giants.” The conclusion was (and still is?) It's “fundamentals are dead.” ² The modern version of “fundamentals don't matter” itself isn't stupid. It's rooted in a lot of ideas that many of us on the Compound team have written before. The biggest companies get the most mechanical purchases, and the software industry has a winner-take-all economic law. AI means that giants can transform scale into moats faster than challengers, and there are also reasons why the market's microstructure embeds momentum more deeply into our market infrastructure. These are all real...

1d ago深潮TechFlow#US stocks

Bitcoin's rebound may just be a blood sacrifice for bears after bursting $1.1 billion overnight

Author: Shenchao TechFlow Original title: BTC's largest single-day short liquidation in history: $1.1 billion of short funds evaporated overnight, but shouting back is too early for every escape from death, requiring empty sacrifices. Bitcoin's intraday volume skyrocketed last night, once approaching the $70,000 mark. While the investment community is full of buoyancy, what you might not know is that last night was the largest single-day short liquidation in crypto history. The network's single-day bears rallied over 1.1 billion US dollars, breaking historical records in a fractured manner. The $1.1 billion bears were tightened overnight, breaking the crypto history record. On the night of August 19, BTC started around $64,000 and rose about 7% in an hour, reaching an intraday high of $69,970, just one step away from the 70,000 mark. This is the highest price since early June and the biggest one-day increase since March. The sharp rise was accompanied by blood washing in the contract market. According to public contract data, the entire network closed out about US$1,345 million in the past 24 hours, involving 105,000 traders, of which short orders were about US$1,191 million, and the long ones were only 153 million. In the most intense hour, the entire network sold out $1,194 million, with bears accounting for 93.5%. By currency type, Bitcoin contract bears were liquidated by about $662 million in 24 hours, while Ethereum bears were about $366 million. Leveraged positions that bet on falling were uprooted almost at the same time. Several whale positions on Hyperliquid totaling nearly $200 million (large highly leveraged companies) have also been completely liquidated. The liquidation itself will speed up the market. A strong bearish position means being forced to buy back up. The higher the price, the more explosive the higher the higher the higher the higher the higher the higher the higher the higher the price, forming a self-reinforcing feedback loop. At the same time, judging from multiple data sources, this is the largest Bitcoin shorting settlement in a single day. The White House summit was only the trigger; the catalyst came from the bond market attributing the surge to the combined benefits of the two. One is the message side. On August 19, Trump met with crypto industry executives such as Coinbase, Kraken's parent company Payward, and Blockchain.com at the White House, and the market's optimism about the shift in regulation heats up. The other one is lower level. On the same day, the US Treasury Department announced a direct doubling of the liquidity support for long-term treasury bond repurchases, raising the upper limit of a single operation from 2 billion US dollars to at least 4 billion US dollars, effective September 9. In the crypto community's view, this is a more tangible sign than the summit: macro liquidity is loosening in the direction of risky assets. The data also confirms institutional buying. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs had a net inflow of $297.6 million on Monday and another $189 million on Tuesday; funding rates have risen to a 20-month high. The bulls are crowded, and the bears are even more crowded. Once the price starts, a strong pedal will automatically be relayed. The last big bear liquidation dates back to 5.19, and old chives must remember “5.19” in May 2021: China clearly prohibited financial institutions and payment institutions from carrying out virtual currency-related business. Amidst the panic, Bitcoin hit more than 40,000 US dollars to around 30,000 US dollars in one day, and the entire network closed out about 7 billion US dollars in 24 hours, setting a historical record at the time. The 5.19 collapse liquidated bulls, and about $7.56 billion in long leveraged positions were instantly washed away. However, over the next few days, in the midst of panic, a large number of traders frantically leveraged at the bottom to chase the sky. As a result, there was an extremely violent retaliatory backlash. According to K33 Research quoting Coinglass data, short positions of approximately $757 million in a single day were instantly washed away, making it the largest day for BTC perpetual short settlements in history. And that record was broken just yesterday. After the liquidation of top bears, the market is often polished for a few weeks, and the liquidation of top bears is often a sign that the mid-term phased bottom has been completely consolidated. Positions are cleared after deleveraging, and macro-liquidity is transferred to encryption, and it takes weeks of cold washing and energy in the middle. Will this time be the same? Bitcoin is currently around $69,200, and the 24-hour increase narrowed to 7.6% (as of the morning of August 20). Sentiment indicators are still hesitating: the fear and greed index is 46, which is still in the fear zone; the probability that Bitcoin will reach 70,000 this month on the Polymarket has jumped to about 70% from before the surge. Axel Rudolph, IG's chief technical analyst, observes: Bitcoin is moving towards $70,000, driven by bears' recovery, indicating that buyers are...

2d agoburnking#Bitcoin

The migrant workers who got on the bus with 1 yuan/share finally waited until the day Yuju went public

Author: David, Shenchao TechFlow Original title: Yu Shu with a market value of 400 billion yuan, and a “multi-millionaire” migrant worker with a market value of 1 yuan/share. On August 19, Yushu Technology landed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board. The opening market rose 629% to 1,100 yuan, and at one point the market capitalization reached 444.9 billion yuan. The retail investors that won the lottery made a profit of 470,000. The entire network is keen to watch the rich-making effects after the stock listing. For example, founder Wang Xingxing's net worth was 133.5 billion, and the richest man in the post-90s changed hands. Lei Jun's Shunwei capital also surged 15.2 billion dollars due to previous investments. The largest external shareholder, Meituan, surpassed 333 billion dollars in profit. Even Liang Wenfeng's Deep Search and Magic Square, and Daxin have also collected 1.1 billion dollars. The bosses counted the money, the retail investors were overwhelmed, and it was a lively meal of wealth. It's just that these numbers have nothing to do with the vast majority of migrant workers. When the spotlight falls on Wang Xingxing, who is ringing the bell, and VC investors, the story that is actually closer to the ceiling of migrant workers getting rich is actually hidden in a company called “Shanghai Yuyi” in Yushu Technology's prospectus. This company does not have “Yuki” in its name, but it is Yushu's employee equity incentive platform and holds 10.94% of Yushu Technology's shares. The batch of 1 yuan/share options that Yu Shu signed to employees in 2017 when they couldn't pay their wages were packed inside. Today, among the owners of this batch of options, the highest net worth at current prices has reached 1.58 billion. Yu Yi and Yu Yi followed the prospectus to check the above. Shanghai Yu Yi is a limited partnership. Employees do not directly hold Yuki shares, but rather hold shares in this partnership company and use it to hold shares indirectly. The partner list contains several layers of shareholding platforms and dozens of natural employees. At the top of the list were the three post-90s. Yang Zhiyu, head of mechanical structure, born in 1991, majoring in machinery and automation at Zhejiang University. He joined the company as soon as it was founded in 2016 and has indirect shareholding of approximately 1.7837 million shares. Based on Yu Shu's high stock price on the first day, the paper net worth was 1.58 billion yuan. Chen Li, head of sales and service system, born in 1990, holds approximately 946,400 shares and has a net worth of 840 million yuan. Zhang Yangguang, head of algorithms and software, born in 1993, majoring in automation at Nankai University. At the 2025 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, “Yang BOT”, a robot twisting songs, went viral all over the country, and he led the development of the function of generating action programs directly from videos. It holds approximately 546,000 shares and has a net worth of 480 million yuan. But in addition to these 3 people, where are the equity incentives for the more migrant workers mentioned earlier? Shanghai Yuyi has only 6 direct partners in total. Wang Xingxing, Chen Li, and Yang Zhiyu are executive partners, plus two partnership companies, Hangzhou Yixin and Hangzhou Yiyi. However, the vast majority of employees' names don't fit into this list. Since limited partnerships only allow 50 partners at most, Yushu Company also added a “share container” with two shares, the next heart and the next intention, on top of it, forming a three-tier structure of “Shanghai Yuyi, Next Heart, Second Mind, Employees”. Therefore, more of this company's incentives for ordinary migrant workers are included in the above two second-level platforms. And when the list goes up to this level, it's where ordinary migrant workers pile up. More than 60 front-line R&D technical supervisors and core technical employees received shares ranging from 0.01% to 0.05% through the platform; based on the closing market value of 358 billion dollars on the first day, their net worth was between 35 million and 170 million. The equity plan that was signed when wages could not be paid went back to 2017. Yushu was founded in the second year. After the financing was spent, the wages could not be paid. In November of that year, Tian Jiangchuan, the original capital, met Wang Xingxing. After talking for a long time but not investing, he wrote four words in his internal investment notes: background grass roots. Three years later, the original capital re-entered at a valuation of 4 times, and Taegawa later attributed his initial misjudgment to his “elitist arrogance.” However, in the early days when there was no capital injection, Wang Xingxing's decision was to stop his own wages and pay employees out of his own pocket. In September of that year, the company signed the first batch of option agreements with 17 first-generation core employees including Yang Zhiyu, at an exercise price of 1 yuan/registered capital. Over the next few years, the company carried out multiple rounds of equity incentives one after another, and eventually all of them were managed uniformly by the Shanghai Yuyi platform. The three 90s at the top of the list, and more than 100 people closely behind, came in one by one. now...

3d ago深潮TechFlow#public #Yushu Technology

BONK's crypto treasury revenue soared 6218% in half a year. Why was there only $214,000 left on the account?

Author: Claude, Shenchao TechFlow Original title: BONK Crypto Treasury has only $2.1 million in cash, but 70% of the revenue comes from the founder's own platform Shenchao Guide: On August 14, the NASDAQ listed company Bonk, Inc. (BNKK) handed over the ledger for the first half of the year: revenue of $5.5 million, a sharp increase of 6218% over the previous year, but the net loss was 7.88 million, leaving only $214,000 in cash on the account. The auditor clearly warned that the company “has serious doubts about continuing operations.” What is more noteworthy is that of this 5.5 million revenue, 3.92 million, or 71%, came from the revenue share of the platform associated with founder Mitchell Rudy. Rudy holds approximately 40.2% of common shares and all Series C preferred shares through Lucky Dog Holdings, which can elect half of the company's directors. This publicly traded company, which was renamed from beverage company Safety Shot, gave its life back to the same person. First, tell me who this company is. BONK is one of the most well-known meme coins on Solana. It was airdropped to the community at the end of 2022, and has no corporate entity itself. Bonk, Inc. is a NASDAQ listed company (stock code: BNKK), formerly known as Safety Shot, which sells energy drinks. It changed its name in October 2025 and announced its transformation into a “digital infrastructure company connecting traditional open markets and the decentralized economy”: BONK tokens in the treasury, and also extracted from LetsBonk.fun, a meme coin launch platform in the BONK ecosystem. On August 17, the company released its first half results, and the subsequent 10-Q quarterly report disclosed the full accounts on August 14. The data contrast was huge: revenue of $5.5 million, up 6218% year over year; however, the net loss for the same period was $7.88 million, mainly due to the decline in the price of BONK tokens held, and unrealized losses of $8.17 million were calculated. As of June 30, there was $214,000 in cash on the account, $203,000 in working capital, and a cumulative loss of $191.4 million. The auditor M&K CPAS and management both wrote in the report that these conditions raised major doubts about the company's ability to continue operating (that is, what auditors often call going concerns). Revenue surged 6218% in the first half of the year, and 71% of the $5.5 million revenue from the founder's own platform comprised two parts: the beverage business sold $1,579 million, and the remaining $3.921 million was all revenue share from related parties, accounting for 71% of revenue. This split comes from LetsBonk.fun. Launched by the BONK community in collaboration with DEX Raydium, it is a meme coin launcher running on Solana. The gameplay is similar to pump.fun: anyone can send a token with a little SOL, trade on a curve, and enter the Raydium liquidity pool after reaching scale. The platform charges a 1% processing fee for transactions, and part of the revenue is used to buy back and destroy BONK. From the end of 2025 to the beginning of 2026, it surpassed pump.fun several times in terms of single-day coin issuance, and once became one of the most active launchpads on Solana. 10-Q disclosed that on August 8, 2025, the company signed a revenue sharing agreement with related party Bonk Digital, Inc., to receive a portion of the platform's future revenue stream; it was revised to 51% of LetsBonk.fun's total revenue on December 10, and both parties can also agree to return to 10%. The documents do not disclose Bonk Digital's shareholder structure, only stating that it is a related party linked to the company “through shared ownership and governance.” In other words, 71% of the company's revenue depends on how popular a platform is in the founder's ecosystem. The founder holds 40.2% of the shares, and the C-Series Preferred Stock can elect half of the board company's largest shareholders and the same group of people behind this related platform. Mitchell Rudy, popularly known as Nom, founder and director of Bonk, Inc. According to a letter of attorney from the company's December 2025 shareholders' meeting, Lucky Dog Holdings, controlled by Rudy, benefited from holding...

3d ago深潮TechFlow#Bonk

Revenue is cut! Korean crypto exchanges can't handle it anymore

Source: Shenchao TechFlow Article: Cookie Original title: Shortage of revenue from the Korean Crypto Exchange: The most profitable business can't escape the decline in liquidity, the business most like traditional finance, and is also most constrained by cycles like traditional finance. Key points: Dunamu, the parent company of Upbit and Bithumb, the two largest crypto exchanges in Korea, released financial reports for the first half of 2026 on the same day. Revenue was almost down (down about 49% year on year), but profit performance was extremely uneven: Dunamu's net profit was 108.4 billion won (down 74.1% year on year), while Bithumb had a net loss of 108.7 billion won (profit of 55 billion won in the same period last year). The main reason for the decline: The total trading volume of South Korea's licensed Korean won exchanges fell 49.5% year-on-year in the second quarter, and fee revenue declined simultaneously with the overall contraction of the market. Profit difference: Dunamu has better cost control and remains profitable; Bithumb's losses include digital asset impairment and regulatory penalties, and the operating profit margin is less than 9%. Capital flow: South Korea's retail capital is shifting from the crypto market to AI and semiconductor concept stocks (Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix), and a 22% crypto profits tax will be introduced in 2027, curbing the will to trade. IPO process: Dunamu received an investment of about 1.5 trillion won from Samsung affiliates and others, and cooperated with Naver Financial to advance the KRX listing; Bithumb plans a three-phase IPO, targeting 2028, but current financial performance is under pressure. Industry reflection: The business model, which accounts for nearly 100% of transaction fees, showed strong cyclical characteristics. The profit margin fell from 88% in 2021 to the current 14%. Exchange valuation logic faced open market torture and transformed into a key issue. South Korea's two largest crypto exchanges simultaneously handed over a nearly symmetrical recession report card. On August 14, Upbit's parent company Dunamu submitted its report for the first half of 2026 to the Korea Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) electronic disclosure system. Bithumb's semi-annual report also surfaced on the same day. Looking at the two financial reports together, it's like two perspectives on the same recession. Dunamu's consolidated revenue for the first half of the year was 408.1 billion won, down 49.1% year on year; operating profit was 111.5 billion won, down 79.7% year on year; net profit was 108.4 billion won, down 74.1% year on year. Bithumb's revenue for the first half of the year was 168.8 billion won, down 48.7% year on year; operating profit was 14.9 billion won, down 83.4% year on year; net loss was 108.7 billion won, compared to net profit 55 billion won for the same period last year. Revenue declines were almost the same, all around 49%. However, there is a huge gap on the profit side. Despite a sharp drop in profits, Dunamu still earned 108.4 billion won. Bithumb directly turned into losses, and the amount of losses even exceeded Dunamu's net profit. At the same ebb, the revenue of the two companies at different levels fell at the same time. The reason is simple: the total trading volume of the five licensed Korean won exchanges (Upbit, Bithumb, Coinone, Korbit, Gopax) in the second quarter fell 49.5% year over year to about US$146.4 billion. The overall market has shrunk in half, and handling fee revenue has naturally shrunk in half. But why is Dunamu still profitable and Bithumb losing money? The difference is revenue structure and cost control. Upbit's trading platform revenue for the first half of the year was approximately 395.5 billion won, accounting for 97% of total revenue. Bithumb has a higher percentage, and almost 100% comes from transaction fees. Both are highly dependent on transaction fees, but Dunamu has better control on the cost side. Bithumb's losses include digital asset impairment losses and administrative expenses associated with regulatory penalties. One more number explains the problem. At its peak in 2021, Dunamu left an operating profit of 88 won for every 100 won of revenue. By the second quarter of 2026, this figure became 14 won. The operating profit margin dropped from 88% to 14%. In five years, same company, same business model. Bithumb's situation is more extreme. The operating profit for the first quarter was only 2.8 billion won, and the net loss was 86.9 billion won, including significant digital asset impairment and compliance rectification expenses. Although the business level recovered in the second quarter, the first half of the year as a whole remained a net loss. Where did the money go? The decline in South Korea's crypto trading volume is directly linked to a structural shift in local capital flows. 2026...

3d ago22#Bithumb

What happened to Farcaster, which was sold twice in a year and is valued at $1 billion?

Author: Shenchao TechFlow Original title: Farcaster, which was once valued at 1 billion US dollars, ushered in a project resold for the second time in a year, and was sold twice within a year. What an experience. On August 17, Farcaster operator Neynar's co-creator Rish announced the search for a new team for the Farcaster agreement, official app, and coin platform Clanker. The company returned the remaining funds and the team later disbanded. It's only been 7 months since Neynar took over the project from the founding team. And that handover was Farcaster's first “sold”. This Web3 social star, once invested by Paradigm and a16z and valued at $1 billion, has entered the process of finding a home for the second time in a year. The founding team that left first On January 21 of this year, Farcaster's founding team, Merkle Manufactory, did an uncommon thing: handing over all of the agreements, codebase, official app, and Clanker to Neynar, and then refunded all of the $180 million in financing to investors. The two founders, Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan, joined the payment chain Tempo (a project incubated by Stripe and Paradigm). The money was refunded, the people left, and the project was left behind. The takeover, Neynar, a middleware company that makes Farcaster development tools, raised $11 million in Series A in 2024. What it saw when it took over was a developer-first social network and a coin machine that was printing money. After 7 months, it also started looking for a new home. Rish wrote in the announcement that the acquisition seemed like a good choice at the beginning of the year, but then it changed so much that Neynar “no longer fits the needs of the next phase.” The announcement was posted on Farcaster in advance, and he said, don't be so sudden this time around. The money printer temporarily shut down. Among the assets Neynar took over, the most valuable was Clanker, an AI one-click coin issuing robot. At the beginning of this year, when the AI coin issuance hype was at its peak, it was Farcaster Ecological's cash cow, which swept away $35 million in on-chain coin service fees in one quarter. According to DeFilLama data, Farcaster Ecosystem's agreement fee: $35.43 million for the first quarter of 2026. In the second quarter, $4.67 million. From July 1 to August 17, $377,000. But for the past 24 hours, the agreement cost was only $4001. From 35.43 million in a single quarter to 4,000 in a single day, the drop was 99%. The cumulative processing fee of 94.1 million US dollars since its launch has become a monument parked at the top of the mountain. Meanwhile, CLANKER token repurchases, which are fed by handling fees, have stopped. The cost side is also an issue. According to Rish, to keep this full-stack social network running, it costs 100,000 dollars a month, and at its peak, 500,000. However, in the last 30 days, the revenue of the entire ecosystem was $120,000, which can only be said to cover the monthly consumption of the project. At the same time, RiSH also wrote on Farcaster: The operating cost is really high, but it really wasn't a factor in our decision. This number is being disclosed because it may influence the next team's decisions. Our balance sheet can absorb current costs indefinitely. The other sentence is more straightforward: “This is not a financial decision. Gathering energy is much harder than raising capital. “(It's much harder to raise energy than capital.) is probably the most accurate microcosm of Farcaster's development over the past seven years. Perhaps the problem with the consumer-grade social illusion Farcaster really isn't the cost. After the market is booming, it is not critical how much money the project burns this month, because the existing capital can still cover this part. But in terms of direction and demand, one question is hard to avoid: Why are users leaving X and coming to you? Alliance Co-Founder Imran's review is straightforward: Farcaster was a useful...

4d ago深潮TechFlow#Farcaster #WEB3

Is the code no longer worth it? The $11.2 billion financing gave the same answer

Author: Shenchao TechFlow Original title: Revealing the $11.2 billion funding flow in half a year: The crypto industry's most valuable asset is changing from code to license Dubai crypto lawyer Irina Heaver and her team NeosLegal did a simple but powerful thing: sorting through all publicly disclosed crypto industry financings in the first half of 2026, totaling about $112 billion. The conclusion is only one sentence: every loan with a disclosed amount goes to a business that requires regulatory permission to operate. The top three tracks are: $3.7 billion in payments and stablecoins, $2 billion in forecasting markets, and $1.7 billion in exchanges and trading platforms. All three areas have one characteristic in common, requiring a license to operate lawfully in any major jurisdiction. Institutional capital's valuation logic for the crypto industry has changed from “what code can you do” to “do you have a license or not”. Who checks the cheque who pays the bill first. Kalshi closed a $1 billion financing round in May, with investors including Sequoia, Morgan Stanley, Ark Invest, and a16z. Polymarket received $600 million, and the lead investor was the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange. It only predicted a single market track and completed 34 rounds of financing within half a year. Among the $3.7 billion in payments and stablecoin circuits, the names BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and the Persian Gulf Sovereign Fund appear repeatedly. Vineet Budki, Managing Partner at Sigma Capital, put it bluntly: Regulatory licenses have gone from compliance footnotes to core valuation metrics. There is cold arithmetic behind this judgment. An application cycle for a MiCA license or Dubai VARA license usually takes 18 to 24 months and costs millions of dollars. Codes can be forked over the weekend; licenses can't. When venture capital evaluates two projects with similar functions, the one with the license naturally has a moat that cannot be quickly replicated by competitors. The license plate is a new moat to look at this phenomenon on a longer timeline. In 2020-2021, the main themes of crypto financing were protocols and infrastructure. Public chains, DeFi protocols, and NFT platforms have taken most of VC money. The investment logic is technical barriers and network effects. Whoever has the highest TVL, who has the most active developer ecosystem, is worth the most. In 2022 - 2023, the bear market cleaned out a number of pure narrative projects, and financing began to lean towards businesses with real income. Exchanges, wallets, and infrastructure companies have increased their share of financing. Data for the first half of 2026 show that this trend has reached a logical end: capital is no longer paying for technological innovation itself, but for “the ability to operate technological innovation within a compliance framework.” To put it bluntly, a code is a necessary condition; a license is a sufficient condition. This is highly consistent with the evolutionary path of the traditional financial industry. Fintech companies relied on technology disrupted financing in the early 2010s, and by the late 2010s, they relied on licenses and compliance capabilities. Stripe is worth 100 billion dollars, and the core barrier is its ability to operate in compliance in more than 40 countries, far exceeding the technical gap of the payments API itself. The crypto industry is following the same path, only faster. Funding flows and user activity are being split, but there is an important gap in this set of data: it only counts financing, not users. On-chain data shows that DeFi protocols are growing in TVL, DEX trading volume, and number of active addresses in the first half of 2026. Uniswap, Aave, and Jupiter's unlicensed daily activity and trading volume didn't shrink because VC money stopped flowing to them. Retail users are still trading, borrowing, and providing liquidity on the chain. This means that what is happening is a more subtle split rather than the “death of unlicensed agreements”: institutional capital is flowing to compliant, licensed centralized businesses, and retail user activity is still distributed in an unlicensed on-chain market. Money and people are moving in two directions. This split is most evident in the prediction market. Kalshi and Polymarket both predict markets, but Kalshi is a CFTC-registered exchange, and Polymarket has no license in the US. Kalshi got $1 billion in financing and Morgan Stanley...

5d ago深潮TechFlow#Kalshi #Exchanges #stablecoins #financing #Predicting the market

Trump is sitting on the same stage, and the two supervisors are on the same stage. What tone will this crypto summit set?

Author: Claude, Shenzhen TechFlow Original title: Crypto Summit Preview: Trump personally sits in town, what new regulations will the SEC and CFTC heads agree on on the same stage? In-depth explanation: On August 19, the White House will convene a meeting with crypto giants such as Coinbase, Ripple, and a16z, as well as traditional finance executives such as Nasdaq and CME. Trump himself, SEC Chairman Atkins, and CFTC Chairman Selig are expected to attend. The summit comes on the eve of the Senate's 60-vote procedural vote on the CLARITY Act on September 15. Industry commentator Nate Geraci determined that the White House no longer plans to wait for Congress. On August 14, Semafor reporter Eleanor Mueller released news on X: The White House is preparing for a crypto industry summit, scheduled for August 19 (Wednesday). The source is “someone who knows the plan.” Politico followed up on the same day, citing three anonymous people familiar with the matter to confirm. ETF industry commentator Nate Geraci then published a more complete list of invitees on X: Trump himself, SEC Chairman Atkins, CFTC Chairman Selig, and crypto industry executives such as Coinbase, Polymarket, Ripple, and Gemini. Traditional financial giants were also invited. Geraci is the president of The ETF Store and has been commenting on ETFs and crypto assets in mainstream financial media for a long time. At the end of his tweet, he said, “The government is not going to wait for the CLARITY Act. Asking for support is fine, but I think they've decided to move forward no matter what. I expect this conference will send this signal strongly.” Who has been invited to the White House crypto and prediction market: Coinbase, Ripple, a16z (Andreessen Horowitz), Chainlink, Paradigm, Kalshi. Representatives from the industry organization Digital Chamber were also invited. Blockonomi's coverage also added Gemini, Robinhood, and Polymarket. Traditional financial side: Nasdaq, CME Group, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), DTCC. Executives from these companies also serve on the CFTC's newly formed Innovation Advisory Committee (IAC). Administration side: Trump himself is expected to attend, and SEC Chairman Paul Atkins and CFTC Chairman Michael Selig confirmed their participation. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick may attend, but no final confirmation has been made. The conference venue is the Eisenhower Executive Office building, close to the main White House building. The White House and neither of the two regulators have released an official agenda. Compared to the March 2025 summit, Kalshi and Polymarket are on the list, and MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor is missing. The main characters changed a group. The CLARITY Act and Trump's crypto wallet CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633) will solve a problem that has dragged on for more than a decade: delineating the regulatory boundaries between the SEC and CFTC on digital assets. Which tokens are securities managed by the SEC, and which are commodities managed by the CFTC. Blurred borders have caused US crypto exchanges to frequently remove tokens, unable to launch products in the US, and the company moved its headquarters overseas. In July 2025, the House of Representatives passed 294 to 134, and 78 Democrats voted in favor. In May 2026, the Senate Banking Committee advanced 15-9. When it came to the full house voting session, it got stuck. Senate Majority Leader John Thune filed a cloture motion before the August 8 recess. On September 15, at 2:15 p.m., the procedural vote began, with a 60 vote threshold. The Republican Party holds 53 seats and is still 7 votes short of all in favor. The market structure provisions have basically been finalized; what is really stuck is a few political issues. Trump's crypto assets are the sharpest. Senator Th...

5d ago深潮TechFlow#CFTC #Coinbase #SEC #Trump